Now there never was yet a critic since the world began who accosts an author in such a mood who has the least difficulty in making good his intention. If the man has wit, he lacks propriety. If he has invention, he lacks art. If his writing is marvelously alive, it is of course barbarous. If it is poetical, it is not true to nature. If it should happen to be true to nature, the whole performance is so flat, stale and mediocre as to be unworthy of the pains spent upon it. Whichever way the author turns, the critic is ready for him. Every merit he possesses serves as a fresh weapon to assail him.
Had these gentlemen had the good fortune to live two hundred years later, when the reputation of the author was already secure, they would have been among the first to make him the standard of comparison. It would have then been quite legitimate to admire “The Merchant of Venice,” and even to have taken credit for doing so. But how was it possible for men of polite learning to treat seriously the production of a shabby fellow who took your half-crown at the entrance to the inn yard?
Yet, in spite of themselves, Mr. Francis Bacon and his two august friends were not a little diverted by the briskness of the piece. But any entertainment there was to be derived from it had, of course, to be laid to the door of the actors. The acting was undoubtedly excellent, but the less said of the play, the better.
Still, notwithstanding the fact that the opinion of the critics who graced the proscenium was not very favorable, all the rest of the house appeared mightily to approve the play. The afternoon had turned wet and there was no roof to the inn yard, but those who were packed in it so closely that they could hardly breathe, followed the whole of the piece with ever-growing excitement. They roared with delight at its humors. Portia, who was played by young Parflete, enchanted them. They execrated the Jew, yet Richard Burbage, as became the great actor he was, invested his defeat with a pathetic dignity that almost drew their tears.
“Ha! now, that is the man,” said Mr. Francis Bacon. “I ask you, what had the play been without such incomparable acting?”
“What, indeed!” said the learned doctors.
“I must make that fellow my compliments upon his performance,” said the Master of Balliol College.
And a few minutes afterwards, when the delighted audience was streaming out of the yard, these great men condescended to approach the tragedian and express their approval.
“Fain would I make you my compliments, sir,” said Mr. Francis Bacon, in his highest style, in order to impress the person he addressed, “upon the inimitable art you have used this afternoon. The performance would have been barren enough without it. Never have I seen acting so choice lavished on a play so inferior.”
The tragedian looked very doubtfully at Mr. Francis Bacon.