(Bearing in mind that Bacon was probably regarded by the audience as an ill-used man, this exhortation sorts well with what I take to be the true interpretation of the Masque. So does the motto with which it opens. In that motto Martial bids ill-natured censors to leave him alone and keep their venom for self-admirers, persons vain of their own achievements. From first to last, therefore, Time Vindicated seems to have been deliberately adjusted to Bacon.)
The second part of this quasi-national scheme for doing honour to Shakespeare-Bacon falls now to be considered. The First Folio was published, it would seem, towards the end of 1623. Though not entered on the Stationers’ Register till November, it may well have been on the stocks before that, for the difficulties of collecting, arranging with interested printers, editing, adapting (The Tempest for example), and so forth, must have been extraordinary. The volume is introduced by some doggerel, signed “B. I.,” which tells the reader:
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein, etc.
Derision and mystification, twin motives or causes of the guy Chronomastix, are equally the motives of this grotesque “figure.” Whether this were also intended to parody the doggerel inscribed on Shakespeare’s gravestone in Stratford Church may be open to doubt. That inscription runs:
Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digge the dust encloased heare;
Bleste be the man, etc.
Warned by “B. I.” that laughter is in that air, we turn to the famous Ode itself which is signed “Ben: Ionson”(not “B. I.”) This Poem opens with a significant hint that the “name” Shakespeare, as distinct from his “book” and his “fame,” was a delicate subject to handle. After having assured himself with much ado that Shakespeare’s (true) name is now in no danger, Jonson proceeds to inform him that he (Shakesspeare) is alive still, “a moniment without a tombe.” Then comes the line: “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,” which is generally mistaken for a categorical statement that Shakespeare lacked Latin, whereas it should be understood as equivalent to “Supposing thou hadst small Latin,” etc. The word “would” in the next sentence (“From thence to honour thee I would not seek”) shows this to be the reading.
Then come the triumphant verses in which, after having challenged “insolent Greece or haughtie Rome” to produce a greater than Shakespeare, Jonson exclaims:
Triumph my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth, etc.
(Compare this with what Jonson wrote of Bacon not many years later: Bacon “is he, who hath filled up all numbers; and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. In short, within his view and about his times were all the wits born that could honour a language, or helpe study. Now things daily fall, wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward. So that hee may be named, and stand as the marke and akme of our language.... Hee seemed to mee ever, by his worke, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had beene in many Ages.” The similarity between the two eulogies strikes one the moment they are brought into juxtaposition, and this helps to explain the exclusion of the Ode from the collected Workes of Ben: Jonson: 1640-1.)
After this rapturous outburst the mood changes, and we are bored by a number of didactic lines about the need of toil and sweat as well as genius, “for the good poet’s made as well as born.” The passage is one among many symptoms of Jonson’s long-standing quarrel with Shakespeareolators—a quarrel which at a later date found expression in the Discoveries—for refusing to see that the carelessness of their idol was at times not less conspicuous than his genius. Satisfied with having vindicated his own consistency, Jonson goes on to declare that each “well-torned and true-filed” line of Shakespeare’s “seemes to shake a lance as brandished at the eyes of ignorance.” (Obviously, therefore, Jonson had in view a peculiar kind of ignorance, one which the mere technique displayed in the First Folio would, but for a misunderstanding, have put to flight. The quondam Justice of Time Vindicated who was wont to cry “O happy man! to the wrong party,” suggests the misunderstanding in question. What, moreover, are we to make of the “stage” shaking and “lance” shaking and brandishing? How reconcile this punning upon shake and spear with the opening lines of the Ode which breathe forth reverence for “thy name.” It had been difficult, short of direct statement, to give plainer indications that Jonson was out for a juggle with a pair of names, one of them an alias.)