“A few workes also beare th’ name o’ my friend, Ben Jonson—these are Sejanus and th’ Masques, used to conceale the Iliads chiefly and to make use o’ my newe cipher....”
“I masqued manie grave secrets in my poems which I have publisht, now as Peele’s or Spenser’s, now as my owne, then againe in th’ name of authours, so cald, who plac’d workes of mixt sort before a reading world, prose and poetry. To Robt. Greene did I entruste most of that work....”
Bacon has limited our speculations upon the extent of his literary work by definitely mentioning the works which he wrote in a cipher discovered by Dr. Owen:
“We will enumerate them by their whole titles
From the beginning to the end: William Shakespeare,
Robert Greene, George Peele, and Christopher Marlowe’s
Stage plays; The Faerie Queen, Shepherd’s Calendar,
And all the works of Edmund Spenser;
The Anatomy of Melancholy of Robert Burton,
The History of Henry VII., The Natural History,
The Interpretation of Nature, The Great Instauration,
Advancement of Learning, The De Augmentis Scientiarum,
Our Essays, and all the other works of our own.”
Even when we note that the Advancement and De Augmentis are the English and Latin versions of the same work—a fact that Dr. Owen appears to have overlooked—Mr. Theobald must acknowledge that this represents a very fair literary output, but it does not form the full list of his works. The names of his cipher or interiour works, are enumerated by Mrs. Gallup:
“There are five histories as followes: The Life o’ Elizabeth, The Life of Essex, The White Rose o’ Britaine, The Life and Death of Edward Third, The Life of Henry th’ Seventh; five tragedies: Mary Queene o’ Scots, Robert th’ Earl o’ Essex (my late brother), Robert th’ Earle o’ Leicester (my late father), Death o’ Marlowe, Ann Bullen; three comedies: Seven Wise Men o’ th’ West, Solomon th’ Second, The Mouse-Trap.”