CHAPTER XIII.— Conclusion, with further evidences from title pages.
Bacon had published eleven plays anonymously, when it became imperatively necessary for him to find some man who could be purchased to run the risk, which was by no means inconsiderable, of being supposed to be the author of these plays which included "Richard II."; the historical play which so excited the ire of Queen Elizabeth. Bacon, as we have already pointed out, succeeded in discovering a man who had little, if any, repute as an actor, but who bore a name which was called Shaxpur or Shackspere, which could be twisted into something that might be supposed to be the original of Bacon's pen name of Shake-Speare.
When in 1597 through the medium of powerful friends, by means of the bribe of a large sum of money, the gift of New Place, and the promise of a coat of arms, this man had been secured, he was at once sent away from London to the then remote village of Stratford-on-Avon, where scarcely a score of people could read, and none were likely to connect the name of their countryman, who they knew could neither read nor write and whom they called Shak or Shackspur, with "William Shakespeare" the author of plays the very names of which were absolutely unknown to any of them.
Bacon, when Shackspur had been finally secured in 1597, brought out in the following year 1598 "Loues Labor's lost" with the imprint "newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere," and immediately he also brought out under the name of Francis Meres "Wits Treasury," containing the statement that eleven other plays, including "Richard II.," were also by this same Shakespeare who had written the poems of "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece."
Francis Meres says: "As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honytongued Shakespeare, witnes his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' his sugred Sonnets among his private friends."
The Sonnets were not printed, so far as is known, before 1609, and they as has been shown in Chapter 8 repeat the story of Bacon's authorship of the plays.
Bacon in 1598, as we have stated in previous pages, fully intended that at some future period posterity should do him justice.
Among his last recorded words are those in which he commends his name and fame to posterity, "after many years had past." Accordingly we find, as we should expect to find, that when he put Shakespeare's name to "Loues Labor's lost" (the first play to bear that name) Bacon took especial pains to secure that at some future date he should be recognised as the real author. Does he not clearly reveal this to us by the wonderful words with which the play of "Loues Labor's lost" opens?
"Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lyues,
Liue registred vpon our brazen Tombes,
And then grace vs, in the disgrace of death:
When spight of cormorant deuouring Time,
Thendeuour of this present breath may buy:
That honour which shall bate his sythes keene edge,
And make us heires of all eternitie."
Bacon intended that "Spight of cormorant devouring Time" ... honour.... should make [him] heir of all eternitie.