And in those days the emoluments of a playwright were too trifling to attract a man like Bacon, who managed to keep himself so deeply in debt that once, at least, he breathed the air of a spunging-house. Nothing but place, retainers, royal donations of rented estates, and official fees, could save him from the moneylenders.
As it is supposed that Shakspeare was not well acquainted with the Latin writers, we are asked to account for the appearance of classical quotations in the plays from writers who had not yet been translated. In the "Taming of the Shrew," iii. 7, there is one from Ovid's Epistles. If Bacon wrote the play, we may suppose that he quoted directly from Ovid. Then why, in Act i. 1 of the same play, did he not quote a Latin line directly from Terence, instead of taking it from Lily's Grammar where the quotation is not correct? And suppose Shakspeare never did nor could read Ovid: it was easy enough for him to pick up those two lines for the fun in iii. 1, even if we reject the opinion that attributes large portions of an earlier form of the play to Marlowe. If Shakspeare only knew Latin through Lily's Grammar, he might have taken Terence from it; but Bacon's scholarship was above that.
A large part of the plot of the "Comedy of Errors" was drawn from the Menæchmi of Plautus, a play which Bacon frequently quotes. On the supposition that Shakspeare was unacquainted with it, we easily account for his knowledge of the plot. A previous play, called the "Historie of Error," acted in 1577, was derived from the same comedy of Plautus; and William Warner's translation of it was freely handed about in manuscript for some time before the appearance of the "Comedy of Errors," though it was not entered at Stationers Hall till June, 1594.[15]
There is a curious parallelism between the fourth scene of Act iv. of the "Winter's Tale," where Perdita shows her tender knowledge of flowers, and Bacon's Essay on Gardens which was not printed till 1625. So it appears that both men were acquainted with the same facts concerning the succession of flowers through the months of the year. And there is nothing strange in that; for the flowers took their same times to bloom for Shakspeare in Stratford as they did for Bacon near London, or in the retreats of Gorhambury. But it is only enough to contrast the exquisite lines of Perdita with Bacon's cataloguing prose, in which not one epithet save "pale" and "yellow" appears, to feel quite sure that the flowers breathed no charm into Bacon's fancy.
"O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon! daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength."
If precious articles at public vendue—Gobelins, rare Palissys, Majolicas, and Sèvres ware—happen to tally with an auctioneer's list of the sale, does it seem quite credible that they were all the production of the auctioneer? "Merciful, wonder-making Heaven!" What a myriad-minded auctioneer!
Indeed, does any one dare to say that Shakspeare and Bacon did not compare notes upon many subjects? Many of the reputed parallelisms are indirect traces of such an intercourse; and it is not a sufficient objection that Shakspeare is nowhere mentioned by Bacon. Neither are Spenser and Marlowe; and we know that he was acquainted with Ben Jonson. Did Ben Jonson and Shakspeare never go to Gray's Inn together? Shakspeare helped Johnson to write his tragedy of "Sejanus;" and the latter was frequently with Bacon during the period of composition? I love to think, as it cannot be disproved, that Shakspeare met high themes of speculation, Nature's curious secrets, and choice allusions of learning, amid the books and apparatus of the philosopher, where problems dear to both these men were discussed. Such an intercourse as this, which varied his close companionship with Essex and Southampton, would be quite sufficient to account for the coincidences which support the Baconian theory: there is, for instance, the passage in "Troilus and Cressida" that puts into Hector's mouth a queer bit of didactic anachronism. Reproving Paris and Troilus, he says,—
"You have both said well;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have gloz'd,—but superficially; not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy."
Aristotle really alluded to "political philosophy;" and when we find that Bacon made the same mistake in his "Advancement of Learning," printed before the play, we think we can see that book in Shakspeare's hand, or overhear with him the error lapsing in the flow of conversation. But perhaps the passage which includes it was one of the parts of "Troilus and Cressida" which did not proceed from Shakspeare's pen. Certainly there was not poetic license enough in Bacon's mind to plant a seaport in Bohemia, and make Aristotle a contemporary of the Trojans. Neither would he have affronted his historical sense and hurt his reputation as a scholar by importing into "Henry VI.," and attributing to Jack Cade and his followers, the socialistic doctrine and mad behavior which Holingshed shows to have belonged to Wat Tyler in the reign of Richard II. It is also strange that the scholar, Bacon, should have put into the mouth of a person in "Coriolanus," i. 4, line 57, that allusion to Cato,—
"Thou wast a soldier
Even to Cato's wish."