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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE UNFOLDED
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE UNFOLDED DELIA BACON WITH
A PREFACE
BY
NATHANIAL HAWTHORNE
AUTHOR OF 'THE SCARLET LETTER' ETC
Aphorisms representing A KNOWLEDGE _broken_ do invite men to
inquire further LORD BACON
You find not the apostophes and so miss the accent.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
Untie the spell.--PROSPERO
LONDON:
GROOMBRIDGE AND SONS
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1857
AMES PRESS
NEW YORK
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
DEC 6 1972
Reprinted from a copy in the collection
of the Harvard College Library
Reprinted from the edition of 1857 London
First AMS EDITION published 1970
Manufactured in the United States of America
International Standard Book Number: 0-404-00443-1
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 73-113547
AMS PRESS INC.
NEW YORK N.Y. 10003
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION.
I. The Proposition
II. The Age of Elizabeth and the Elizabethan Men of Letters
III. Extracts from the Life of Raleigh.--Raleigh's School
IV. Raleigh's School continued.--The New Academy
* * * * *
BOOK I
[The HISTORICAL KEY to the ELIZABETHAN ART of TRADITION which formed
the FIRST BOOK of this Work as it was originally prepared for the
Press is reserved for separate publication.]
THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION.
PART I.
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'
I. Ascent from Particulars to the 'Highest Parts of Sciences' by the
Enigmatic Method illustrated
II. Further Illustration of 'Particular Methods of
Tradition.'--Embarrassments of Literary Statesmen
III. The Possibility of great anonymous Works--or Works published
under an _assumed name_--conveying under rhetorical Disguises the
Principal Sciences--re-suggested and illustrated
PART II.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.
I. THE 'BEGINNERS.'--['Particular Methods of Tradition.'--
The Double Method of 'Illustration' and 'Concealment']
II. INDEX to the 'Illustrated' and 'Concealed Tradition' of
the Principal and Supreme Sciences.--THE SCIENCE OF
POLICY
III. THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. Section I. The Exemplar of Good
IV. THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. Section II. The Husbandry thereunto
or the Cure and Culture of
the Mind.--APPLICATION
V. THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.--ALTERATION
VI. Method of Convoying the Wisdom of the Moderns
* * * * *
BOOK II.
ELIZABETHAN 'SECRETS OF MORALITY AND POLICY'; OR THE FABLES OF THE
NEW LEARNING.
INTRODUCTORY.
I. The Design
II. The Missing Books of the Great Instauration or 'Philosophy
itself'
PART I.
LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER;
[OR THE LAW OF THE 'SPECIAL AND RESPECTIVE DUTIES' DEFINED AND
'ILLUSTRATED' IN TABLES OF 'PRESENCE' AND 'ABSENCE.']
I. Philosophy in the Palace
II. Unaccommodated Man
III. The King and the Beggar
IV. The Use of Eyes
V. The Statesman's Note-Book--and the Play
PART II.
JULIUS CAESAR AND CORIOLANUS.
THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL;
OR
'THE COMMON DUTY OF EVERY MAN AS A MAN OR MEMBER OF A STATE' DEFINED
AND ILLUSTRATED IN 'NEGATIVE INSTANCES' AND 'INSTANCES OF PRESENCE.'
JULIUS CAESAR;
OR THE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE COMMON-WEAL EXAMINED.
I. The Death of Tyranny; or the Question of the Prerogative
II. Caesar's Spirit
CORIOLANUS.
THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP; OR THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE
COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.
I. The Elizabethan Heroism
II. Criticism of the Martial Government
III. 'Insurrections Arguing'
IV. Political Retrospect
V. The Popular Election
VI. The Scientific Method in Politics
VII. Volumnia and her Boy
VIII. Metaphysical Aid
IX. The Cure.--Plan of Innovation.--New Definitions.
X. The Cure.--Plan of Innovation.--New Constructions.
XI. The Cure.--Plan of Innovation.--'The Initiative'
XII. The Ignorant Election revoked.--A 'Wrestling Instance'.
XIII. Conclusion
PREFACE.
This Volume contains the argument drawn from the Plays usually
attributed to Shakspere in support of a theory which the author of it
has demonstrated by historical evidences in another work. Having never
read this historical demonstration (which remains still in manuscript
with the exception of a preliminary chapter published long ago in an
American periodical) I deem it necessary to cite the author's own
account of it:--
'The Historical Part of this work (which was originally the principal
part and designed to furnish the historical key to the great
Elizabethan writings) though now for a long time completed and ready
for the press and though repeated reference is made to it in this
volume is for the most part omitted here. It contains a true and
before unwritten history and it will yet perhaps be published as it
stands; but the vivid and accumulating historic detail with which
more recent research tends to enrich the earlier statement and
disclosures which no invention could anticipate are waiting now to be
subjoined to it.
'The INTERNAL EVIDENCE of the assumptions made at the outset is that
which is chiefly relied on in the work now first presented on this
subject to the public. The demonstration will be found complete on
that ground; and on that ground alone the author is willing and
deliberately prefers for the present to rest it.
'External evidence of course will not be wanting; there will be
enough and to spare if the demonstration here be correct. But the
author of the discovery was not willing to rob the world of this great
question; but wished rather to share with it the benefit which the
true solution of the Problem offers--the solution prescribed by those
who propounded it to the future. It seemed better to save to the world
the power and beauty of this demonstration its intellectual stimulus
its demand on the judgment. It seemed better that the world should
acquire it also in the form of criticism instead of being stupified
and overpowered with the mere force of an irresistible external
historical proof. Persons incapable of appreciating any other kind of
proof--those who are capable of nothing that does not 'directly fall
under and strike _the senses_' as Lord Bacon expresses it--will have
their time also; but it was proposed to present the subject first to
minds of another order.'
In the present volume accordingly the author applies herself to the
demonstration and development of a system of philosophy which has
presented itself to her as underlying the superficial and ostensible
text of Shakspere's plays. Traces of the same philosophy too she
conceives herself to have found in the acknowledged works of Lord
Bacon and in those of other writers contemporary with him. All agree
in one system; all these traces indicate a common understanding and
unity of purpose in men among whom no brotherhood has hitherto been
suspected except as representatives of a grand and brilliant age
when the human intellect made a marked step in advance.
The author did not (as her own consciousness assures her) either
construct or originally seek this new philosophy. In many respects if
I have rightly understood her it was at variance with her
pre-conceived opinions whether ethical religious or political. She
had been for years a student of Shakspere looking for nothing in his
plays beyond what the world has agreed to find in them when she began
to see under the surface the gleam of this hidden treasure. It was
carefully hidden indeed yet not less carefully indicated as with a
pointed finger by such marks and references as could not ultimately
escape the notice of a subsequent age which should be capable of
profiting by the rich inheritance. So too in regard to Lord Bacon.
The author of this volume had not sought to put any but the ordinary
and obvious interpretation upon his works nor to take any other view
of his character than what accorded with the unanimous judgment upon
it of all the generations since his epoch. But as she penetrated more
and more deeply into the plays and became aware of those inner
readings she found herself compelled to turn back to the 'Advancement
of Learning' for information as to their plan and purport; and Lord
Bacon's Treatise failed not to give her what she sought; thus adding
to the immortal dramas in her idea a far higher value than their
warmest admirers had heretofore claimed for them. They filled out the
scientific scheme which Bacon had planned and which needed only these
profound and vivid illustrations of human life and character to make
it perfect. Finally the author's researches led her to a point where
she found the plays claimed for Lord Bacon and his associates--not in
a way that was meant to be intelligible in their own perilous
times--but in characters that only became legible and illuminated
as it were in the light of a subsequent period.
The reader will soon perceive that the new philosophy as here
demonstrated was of a kind that no professor could have ventured
openly to teach in the days of Elizabeth and James. The concluding
chapter of the present work makes a powerful statement of the position
which a man conscious of great and noble aims would then have
occupied; and shows too how familiar the age was with all methods of
secret communication and of hiding thought beneath a masque of
conceit or folly. Applicably to this subject I quote a paragraph from
a manuscript of the author's not intended for present publication:--
'It was a time when authors who treated of a scientific politics and
of a scientific ethics internally connected with it naturally
preferred this more philosophic symbolic method of indicating their
connection with their writings which would limit the indication to
those who could pierce within the veil of a philosophic symbolism. It
was the time when the cipher in which one could write '_omnia per
omnia_' was in such request and when 'wheel ciphers' and 'doubles'
were thought not unworthy of philosophic notice. It was a time too
when the phonographic art was cultivated and put to other uses than
at present and when a '_nom de plume_' was required for other
purposes than to serve as the refuge of an author's modesty or
vanity or caprice. It was a time when puns and charades and
enigmas and anagrams and monograms and ciphers and puzzles were
not good for sport and child's play merely; when they had need to be
close; when they had need to be solvable at least only to those who
_should_ solve them. It was a time when all the latent capacities of
the English language were put in requisition and it was flashing and
crackling through all its lengths and breadths with puns and quips
and conceits and jokes and satires and inlined with philosophic
secrets that opened down "into the bottom of a tomb"--that opened into
the Tower--that opened on the scaffold and the block.'
I quote likewise another passage because I think the reader will
see in it the noble earnestness of the author's character and may
partly imagine the sacrifices which this research has cost her:--
'The great secret of the Elizabethan age did not lie where any
superficial research could ever have discovered it. It was not left
within the range of any accidental disclosure. It did not lie on the
surface of any Elizabethan document. The most diligent explorers of
these documents in two centuries and a quarter had not found it. No
faintest suspicion of it had ever crossed the mind of the most recent
and clear-sighted and able investigator of the Baconian remains. It
was buried in the lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep
Elizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet till now has ever
sounded. It was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary cunning.
It was buried in the inmost recesses of the esoteric Elizabethan
learning. It was tied with a knot that had passed the scrutiny and
baffled the sword of an old suspicious dying military government--a
knot that none could cut--a knot that must be untied.
'The great secret of the Elizabethan Age was inextricably reserved by
the founders of a new learning the prophetic and more nobly gifted
minds of a new and nobler race of men for a research that should test
the mind of the discoverer and frame and subordinate it to that so
sleepless and indomitable purpose of the prophetic aspiration. It was
"the device" by which they undertook to live again in the ages in
which their achievements and triumphs were forecast and to come forth
and rule again not in one mind not in the few not in the many but
in all. "For there is no throne like that throne in the thoughts of
men" which the ambition of these men climbed and compassed.
'The principal works of the Elizabethan Philosophy those in which the
new method of learning was practically applied to the noblest
subjects were presented to the world in the form of AN ENIGMA. It was
a form well fitted to divert inquiry and baffle even the research of
the scholar for a time; but one calculated to provoke the philosophic
curiosity and one which would inevitably command a research that
could end only with the true solution. That solution was reserved for
one who would recognise at last in the disguise of the great
impersonal teacher the disguise of a new learning. It waited for the
reader who would observe at last those thick-strewn scientific
clues those thick-crowding enigmas those perpetual beckonings from
the "theatre" into the judicial palace of the mind. It was reserved
for the student who would recognise at last the mind that was
seeking so perseveringly to whisper its tale of outrage and "the
secrets it was forbid." It waited for one who would answer at last
that philosophic challenge and say "Go on I'll follow thee!" It was
reserved for one who would count years as days for the love of the
truth it hid; who would never turn back on the long road of
initiation though all "THE IDOLS" must be left behind in its stages;
who would never stop until it stopped in that new cave of Apollo
where the handwriting on the wall spells anew the old Delphic motto
and publishes the word that "_unties_ the spell."
On this object which she conceives so loftily the author has
bestowed the solitary and self-sustained toil of many years. The
volume now before the reader together with the historical
demonstration which it pre-supposes is the product of a most faithful
and conscientious labour and a truly heroic devotion of intellect and
heart. No man or woman has ever thought or written more sincerely than
the author of this book. She has given nothing less than her life to
the work. And as if for the greater trial of her constancy her
theory was divulged some time ago in so partial and unsatisfactory a
manner--with so exceedingly imperfect a statement of its claims--as to
put her at great disadvantage before the world. A single article from
her pen purporting to be the first of a series appeared in an
American Magazine; but unexpected obstacles prevented the further
publication in that form after enough had been done to assail the
prejudices of the public but far too little to gain its sympathy.
Another evil followed. An English writer (in a 'Letter to the Earl of
Ellesmere' published within a few months past) has thought it not
inconsistent with the fair-play on which his country prides itself
to take to himself this lady's theory and favour the public with it
as his own original conception without allusion to the author's prior
claim. In reference to this pamphlet she generously says:--
'This has not been a selfish enterprise. It is not a personal concern.
It is a discovery which belongs not to an individual and not to a
people. Its fields are wide enough and rich enough for us all; and he
that has no work and whoso will let him come and labour in them. The
field is the world's; and the world's work henceforth is in it. So
that it be known in its real comprehension in its true relations to
the weal of the world what matters it? So that the truth which is
dearer than all the rest--which abides with us when all others leave
us dearest then--so that the truth which is neither yours nor mine
but yours _and_ mine be known loved honoured emancipated mitred
crowned adored--_who_ loses anything that does not find it.' 'And
what matters it' says the philosophic wisdom speaking in the
abstract 'what name it is proclaimed in and what letters of the
alphabet we know it by?--what matter is it so that they _spell_ the
name that is _good_ for ALL and _good_ for _each_'--for that is the
REAL name here?
Speaking on the author's behalf however I am not entitled to imitate
her magnanimity; and therefore hope that the writer of the pamphlet
will disclaim any purpose of assuming to himself on the ground of a
slight and superficial performance the result which she has attained
at the cost of many toils and sacrifices.
And now at length after many delays and discouragements the work
comes forth. It had been the author's original purpose to publish it
in America; for she wished her own country to have the glory of
solving the enigma of those mighty dramas and thus adding a new and
higher value to the loftiest productions of the English mind. It
seemed to her most fit and desirable that America--having received so
much from England and returned so little--should do what remained to
be done towards rendering this great legacy available as its authors
meant it to be to all future time. This purpose was frustrated; and
it will be seen in what spirit she acquiesces.
'The author was forced to bring it back and contribute it to the
literature of the country from which it was derived and to which it
essentially and inseparably belongs. It was written every word of it
on English ground in the midst of the old familiar scenes and
household names that even in our nursery songs revive the dear
ancestral memories; those "royal pursuivants" with which our
mother-land still follows and retakes her own. It was written in the
land of our old kings and queens and in the land of _our own_
PHILOSOPHERS and POETS also. It was written on the spot where the
works it unlocks were written and in the perpetual presence of the
English mind; the mind that spoke before in the cultured few and that
speaks to-day in the cultured many. And it is now at last after so
long a time--after all as it should be--the English press that prints
it. It is the scientific English press with those old gags (wherewith
our kings and queens sought to stop it ere they knew what it was)
champed asunder ground to powder and with its last Elizabethan
shackle shaken off that restores "in a better hour" the torn and
garbled science committed to it and gives back "the bread cast on its
sure waters."'
There remains little more for me to say. I am not the editor of this
work; nor can I consider myself fairly entitled to the honor (which
if I deserved it I should feel to be a very high as well as a
perilous one) of seeing my name associated with the author's on the
title-page. My object has been merely to speak a few words which
might perhaps serve the purpose of placing my countrywoman upon a
ground of amicable understanding with the public. She has a vast
preliminary difficulty to encounter. The first feeling of every reader
must be one of absolute repugnance towards a person who seeks to tear
out of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name which for ages it has held
dearest and to substitute another name or names to which the
settled belief of the world has long assigned a very different
position. What I claim for this work is that the ability employed in
its composition has been worthy of its great subject and well
employed for our intellectual interests whatever judgment the public
may pass upon the questions discussed. And after listening to the
author's interpretation of the Plays and seeing how wide a scope she
assigns to them how high a purpose and what richness of inner
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