Now I will again set forth the lines in extenso in order that the reader may form his own opinion as to their meaning and evidentiary value. It is to be observed that Davies does not mention Shakespeare (or Shakspere) or Burbage by name, but there are, in a marginal note to the third line, the letters W. S. R. B., which are generally interpreted as bearing reference to those two “deserving men.”[102] Whether he attributes to them all the excellencies so largely writ in Mr. Dowse’s interpretation the reader shall judge. Why Mr. Dowse has written the words “all good” in such startlingly large letters I am unable to say, and I really do not think the poet, who according to Mr. Dowse was of a very strict, if not sanctimonious, turn of mind, intended to attribute ALL GOOD to poor Will Shakspere and Dick Burbage; while as to his being “over exquisite in depreciating their calling,” this fault—if fault it be—he certainly shares with all the other writers of his time concerning the profession and status of the Players. Here is the poem published in the Microcosmos or “The Discovery of the Little World, with the Government thereof,” 1603:
Players, I love yee, and your Qualitie,
As ye are Men, that passtime not abus’d;
And some I love for painting, poesie,
And say fell Fortune cannot be excus’d,
That hath for better uses you refus’d:
Wit, Courage, good shape, good partes, and all good,
As long as al these goods are no worse us’d,
And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloud,
Yet generous yee are in minde and moode.
Mr. Dowse follows this by a reference to Davies’s poem addressed to
Our English Terence, Mr. Will.
Shake-speare.[103]
which appeared, with the sonnet to Bacon already quoted, in the Scourge of Folly (1610-11). On this poem Mr. Dowse waxes eloquent. This, he tells us “in short compass gives us a number of important particulars about him [Shakespeare]. Thus, he acted ‘kingly parts,’ which means lordly manners and bearing and elocution; and if he had not played those parts (the stage again!)[104] he would have been a fit companion for a King; indeed he would have been a king among the general ruck of mankind. He had then (as now) his detractors, but he was above detraction, and never railed in return; for he had a ‘reigning wit,’ i.e. a sovereign intellect.”
I will quote this poem also. The Scourge of Folly by the way, is, we read, a work “consisting of Satyricall Epigramms and others.” I fancy there is a good deal of the “Satyricall” in the following:
Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not plaid some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King;
And, beene a King among the meaner sort.
Some others raile; but, raile as they think fit,
Thou hast no rayling, but a raigning Wit.
And honesty thou sow’st, which they do reape;
So, to increase their Stocke which they do keepe.
So Davies, singing “in sport,” suggests that according to the saying of some, if the Player had not been a Player he might have been a companion for a King (I rather suspect some esoteric meaning here to which, at this date, we cannot penetrate), and have been himself a King “among the meaner sort.” As Miss L. Toulmin Smith writes (Ingleby’s Centurie of Prayse, p. 94) “it seems likely [? certain] that these lines refer to the fact that Shakespere was a player, a profession that was then despised and accounted mean.” The poem, of course, has some value for the supporters of the Stratfordian faith, for, if Davies is here writing in sober seriousness, and with no ironical arrière pensée, it certainly seems to imply that he supposed “Mr. Will Shake-speare, our English Terence,” to be identical with player Shakspere. To which the anti-Stratfordian would reply that, if he did so mean, he was misled, as others were, by the use of the pseudonym Shakespeare. Poems and Plays were published in that name “as it was always printed in those days, and not as he [Shakspere] himself in any known case ever wrote it.”[105] In any case Davies’s lines can hardly be said to be the high eulogy of Player Shakspere that Mr. Dowse would have them to be.[106]
A word more and I have done with Mr. Dowse. As I have already said, that which I still venture to call the “table of contents,” on the outer page of the paper volume, is headed by Bacon’s “Of tribute,” and a list of his four “Praises.” Now, about an inch below the last “Praise” occurs the word fraunces, and a little below and to the right of that is the word turner. These we are told are “in different hands,” though whether or not they are samples of Davies’s hundred different styles it would seem rather difficult to say. Mr. Dowse, however, thinks that fraunces was written by the copyist of the “Praises,” and turner by “the scribbler,” and that the latter word was “apparently intended to stand as if related in some way to fraunces.” He then tells us how pondering over this a brilliant idea struck him. In the middle of the reign of James I occurred the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, instigated by Frances Howard, Lady Essex, and one of this lady’s “principal agents” was a Mrs. Anne Turner. What can be clearer than that we have here a reference to these two notorious criminals? It follows from this that “the MS. was ‘knocking about,’ or at any rate open for additions to the scribble on the cover, as late as 1615.”[107]]
This is going to one’s conclusion per saltum with a vengeance. It is to be observed that fraunces is written just under the ffrauncis of “Mr. ffrauncis Bacon,” and just above that stands “Mr. Ffrauncis.” It seems very probable therefore, that fraunces is only written as a variety of, or at least suggested by, the name “ffrauncis,” though Mr. Burgoyne does not seem to be right in transcribing it in the latter form. The idea that it stands for the “Christian name” of Lady Essex, and “turner” for the surname of her “principal agent” seems an altogether wild one, and I should imagine that no serious critic would seek to fix the date of any part of the scribble by such a hare-brained supposition.[108]