The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

For, having given some other reasons for this opinion he has expressed in regard to the concealed doctrine of the ancients, he concludes in this manner: 'But if any one shall, notwithstanding this, contend that allegories are always adventitious, and no way native or genuinely contained in them, we might here leave him undisturbed in the gravity of that judgment, though we cannot but think it somewhat dull and phlegmatic, and, if it were worth the trouble, proceed to another kind of argument.' And, apparently, the argument he proceeds to, is worth some trouble, since he takes pains to bring it out so cautiously, under so many different heads, with such iteration and fulness, taking care to insert it so many times in his work on the Advancement of Learning, and here producing it again in his Introduction to the Wisdom of the Ancients, accompanied with a distinct assurance that it is not the wisdom of the ancients he is concerning himself about, and their necessities and helps and instruments; though if any one persists in thinking that it is, he is not disposed to disturb him in the gravity of that judgment. He honestly thinks that they had indeed such intentions as those that he describes; but that is a question for the curious, and he has other work on hand; he happens to be one, whose views of learning and its uses, do not keep him long on questions of mere curiosity. It is with the Moderns, and not with the Ancients that he has to deal; it is the present and the future, and not the past that he 'breaks his sleeps' for. Whether the Ancients used those fables for purposes of innovation, and gradual encroachment on error or not, here is a Modern, he tells us, who for one, cannot dispense with them in his teaching.

For having disposed of his graver readers—those of the dull and phlegmatic kind—in the preceding paragraph, and not thinking it worth exactly that kind of trouble it would have cost then to make himself more explicit for the sake of reaching their apprehension, he proceeds to the following argument, which is not wanting in clearness for 'those who happen to be of his ear.'

'Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of Parables, for parables serve as well to instruct and illustrate, as to wrap up and envelope:' [and what is more, they serve at once that double purpose] 'so that for the present we drop the concealed use, and suppose the ancient fables to be vague undeterminate things formed for amusement, still the other use must remain, and can never be given up. And every man of any learning must readily allow that THIS METHOD of INSTRUCTION is grave, sober, exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding, IN ALL NEW DISCOVERIES that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion. Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common, were rare and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, allusions, which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in matters of subtlety and speculation, and even impatient, and in a manner incapable of receiving such things as did not directly fall under and strike the senses.' [And those ages were not gone by, it seems, for these are the very men of whom Hamlet speaks, 'who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.'] 'For as hieroglyphics were in use before writings, so were parables in use before argument. And even to this day, if any man would let NEW LIGHT IN upon the human understanding, [who was it that proposed to do that?] and conquer prejudices without raising animosities, OPPOSITION, or DISTURBANCE—[who was it that proposed to do that precisely]—he must still—[note it]—he must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.' Where are they then? Search and see. Where are they?—The lost Fables of the New Philosophy? 'To conclude, the knowledge of the earlier ages was either great or happy; great, if by design they made use of tropes and figures; happy, if whilst they had other views they afforded matter and occasion to such noble contemplations. Let either be the case, our pains perhaps will not be misemployed, whether we illustrate ANTIQUITY or [hear] THINGS THEMSELVES.

But he complains of those who have attempted such interpretations hitherto, that 'being unskilled in nature, and their learning no more than that of common-place, they have applied the sense of the parables to certain general and vulgar matters, without reaching to their real purport, genuine interpretation and full depth;' certainly it would not be that kind of criticism, then, which would be able to bring out the subtleties of the new learning from those popular embodiments, which he tells us it will have to take, in order to make some impression, at least, on the common understanding. 'Settle that question, then, in regard to the old Fables as you will, our pains will not perhaps be misemployed, whether we illustrate antiquity or things themselves,' and to that he adds, 'for myself, therefore, I expect to appear NEW in THESE COMMON THINGS, because, leaving untouched such as are sufficiently plain and open, I shall drive only those that are either deep or rich.' 'For myself?'—I?—'I expect to appear new in these common things.' But elsewhere, where he lays out the argument of them, by the side of that 'resplendent and lustrous mass of matter,' those heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity, that others have got glory from, it is some Poet we are given to understand that is going to be found new in them. There, the argument is all—all—poetic, and it is a theme for one who, if he know how to handle it, need not be afraid to put in his modest claim, with those who sung of old, the wrath of heroes, and their arms.

Any one who does not perceive that the passages here quoted were designed to introduce more than 'the wisdom of the ancients', the reader who is disposed to conclude after a careful perusal of these reiterated statements, in regard to the form in which doctrines differing from received opinions must be delivered, taken in connexion, too, with that draught of the new science of the human culture and its parts and points, which has just been produced here,—the reader who concludes that this is, after all, a science that was able to dispense with this method of appeal to the senses and the imagination; that it was not obliged to have recourse to that path;—that the NEW LEARNING, 'the NEW DISCOVERY,' had here no fables, no particular topics, and methods of tradition; that it contented itself with abstractions and generalities, with 'the husks and shells of sciences,'—such an one ought, undoubtedly, to be left undisturbed in that opinion. He belongs precisely to that class of persons which this author himself deliberately proposed to leave to such conclusions. He is one whom this philosopher himself would not take any trouble at all to enlighten on such points. The other reading, with all its gravity, was designed for him. The time for such an one to adopt the reading here produced, will be, when 'those who are incapable of receiving such things as do not directly fall under and strike the senses,' have, at last, got hold of it; when 'the groundlings, who, for the most part are capable of nothing but dumb show and noise,' have had their ears split with it, it will be time enough for him.

This Wisdom of the Moderns, then, to resume with those to whom the appeal is made, this new learning which the Wise Man and Innovator of the Modern Ages tells us must be clothed in fable, and adorned with verse, this learning that must be made to fall under and strike the senses; this dumb show of science, that is but show to him who cannot yet take the player's own version of what it means; this illustrated tradition, this beautiful tradition of the New Science of Human Nature,—where is it? This historical collection, this gallery that was to contain scientific draughts and portraitures of the human character, that should exhaust its varieties,—where is it? These new Georgics of the mind whose argument is here,—where are they? This new Virgil who might promise himself such glory,—such new glory in the singing of them,—where is he? Did he make so deep a summer in his verse, that the track of the precept was lost in it? Were the flowers, and the fruit, so thick, there; was the reed so sweet that the argument of that great husbandry could no point,—could leave no furrow in it?

'Where souls do couch, on flowers, we'll hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:
Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
And all the haunt be ours.'

'The neglect of our times,' says this author, in proposing this great argument, this new argument, of the application of SCIENCE to the Culture and Cure of the Mind, 'the neglect of our times, wherein few men do hold any consultations touching the reformation of their lives, may make this part seem superfluous. As Seneca excellently saith, "De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo."' And is that, after all,—is that the trouble still? Is it, that that characteristic of Elizabeth's time—that same thing which Seneca complained of in Nero's,—is it that that is not yet obsolete? Is that the reason, this so magnificent part, this radical part of the new discovery of the Modern Ages, is still held 'superfluous?' 'De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo.' 'Now that we have spoken, and spoken for so many ages, of this fruit of life, it remaineth to speak of the husbandry thereunto.' That is the scientific proposition which has waited now two hundred and fifty years, for a scientific audience. The health of the soul, the scientific promotion of it, the FRUIT OF LIFE, and the observations of its husbandry. 'And if it be said,' he continues, anticipating the first inconsiderate objection, 'if it be said that the cure of mens' minds belongeth to sacred divinity, it is most true; but yet, moral philosophy may be preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For as the Psalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look perpetually towards the mistress, and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the discretion of the handmaid, to discern of the mistress' will; so ought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines of divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.'

For the times that were 'far off' when that proposition was made, it is brought out anew and reopened. Oh, people of the ages of arts and sciences that are called by this man's name, shall we have the fruits of his new doctrine of KNOWLEDGE, brought to our relief in all other fields, and reject it in this, which he himself laid out, and claimed as its only worthy field? Instructed now in the validity of its claims, by its 'magnitude of effects' in every department of the human practice to which it has yet been applied, shall we permit the department of it, on which his labour was expended, to escape that application? Shall we suffer that wild barbaric tract of the human life which the will and affections of man create,—that tract which he seized,—which it was his labour to collect into an art or science, to lie unreclaimed still?

Oh, Man of the new ages of science, will you have the new fore-knowledge, the magical command of effects, which the scientific inquiry into causes as they are actual in nature, puts into our hands, in every other practice, in every other culture and cure,—will you have the rule of this knowledge imposed upon your fields, and orchards, and gardens, to assist weak nature in her 'conservations' and 'advancements' in these,—to teach her to bring forth here the latent ideals, towards which she struggles and vainly yearns, and can only point to, and wait for, till science accepts her hints;—will you have the Georgics of this new Virgil to load your table with its magic clusters;—will you take the Novum Organum to pile your plate with its ideal advancements on spontaneous nature and her perfections;—will you have the rule of that Organum applied in its exactest rigors, to all the physical oppositions of your life, to minister to your physical safety, and comfort, and luxury, and never relax your exactions from it, till the last conceivable degree of these has been secured; and in this department of art and science,—this, in which the sum of our good and evil is contained,—in a mere oversight of it, in a disgraceful indifference and carelessness about it, be content to accept, without criticism, the machinery of the past—instrumentalities that the unlearned ages of the world have left to us,—arts whose precepts were concluded ages ere we knew that knowledge is power.