I have ever learned to obey nor shall my life resist it. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Valentinian 1. 3.) 1619-1647. “Beware, says Bacon, in the Advancement of Learning," of being carried by greatness and presumption of mind to things too difficult and thus of striving against the stream; " and in his note book we find an entry Better to bend than break; These maxims are re-echoed throughout the drama. Frame your manners to the time. SHAKESPEARE (Taming of the Shrew 1. 1.) 1628. You must practise the manners of the time if you intend to find favour from it. MASSINGER (The Unnatural Combat 1. 1.) 1629. For my part I will obey the time in vain to strive against the torrent. it is IBID (Roman Actor 1. 1.) 1626-1629. In vain it is to strive against the stream. GREENE (Alphonsus) 1599. What are thy Arts, good patriot, teach them me, Arts, Arruntius ! None, but the plain and passive fortitude, To lose ourselves by building on impossible hopes were desperate madness. MASSINGER (Roman Actor III. 1.) 1626-1629. To have lost himself by building on impossible hopes were as Spedding caustically points out, "a splendid fate for the man who was adjusting his life to the convenience of the declaimers of a future generation, but unsatisfactory for one who was ambitious of doing some good in his own. 1 One of the most noticeable traits of the Elizabethan drama is the unbounded generosity of its writers, and their princely contempt for money. Emerson, who, me judice, has of all critics nestled most closely into Shakespeare's mind, observes, "One can discern in his ample pictures of the Gentleman and the King what forms of humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. If when he wrote this passage Emerson had had Bacon in his eye he could hardly have described him more accurately. "When his Lordship was at his country house, says Aubrey, St Albans seemed as if the court had been there, so nobly did he live. His servants had liveries with his crest, his watermen were more employed by gentlemen than even the King's. [When] King James sent a buck to him he gave the keeper fifty pounds. Another contemporary -Sir Tobie Matthewdescribes the Lord Chancellor as "a man most sweet in his conversation and ways, grave in his judgments, splendid in his expenses; a friend unalterable to his friends; an enemy to no man; a I Evenings with a Reviewer, Vol. II. p. 76. most hearty indefatigable servant to the king, and a most earnest lover of the public, having all the thoughts of that large heart of his set upon adorning the age in which he lived, and benefiting as far as possible the whole human race. It is not his greatness that I admire, but his virtue; it is not the favours I have received from him, infinite though they be, that have thus enthralled and enchained my heart; but his whole life and character, which are such that, if he were of an inferior condition, I could not honour him the less, and if he were my enemy, I could not the less love and endeavour to serve him. From his youth Bacon was ever splendid in his expenses. It is said that he once borrowed £600, £500 of which went on a single jewel. His servants had free access to his money chests and helped themselves ad libitum. A friend who, noticing this, on one occasion remonstrated, records that Bacon's manner of receiving the information appeared so strange that "he thought his servants must have had some mysterious power over him. 1 " To the end Bacon maintained his imperial ideas of living. "Do what we can, said Prince Charles on meeting his travelling coach with its retinue of gentlemen, "this man scorns to go out in a snuff!" The greatness of mind which Bacon exhibited in his contempt of' money was supplemented by the conviction that he was born not for himself, but for his countrymen, " Believing," says he in I Spedding, Vol. 14, p. 564. the Proem to the Great Instauration, "that I was born for the service of mankind... I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served.. I thought that a mans own country had some special claims upon him more than the rest of the world. In the Muses Looking Glass, Randolph thus paraphrases these sentiments. Being born not for ourselves, but for our friends We do express the majesty of our souls A few lines onwards he adds : To the building of a pyramid at St Albans. The reason why the town St Albans should be thus eternised, in fact why it is dragged in at all, is not apparent. It is a noticeable fact that Elizabethan literature underwent certain pronounced phases. The blithesome and ethereal writings of Spenser, Lyly, Greene, and Peele, culminated in the ripe splendour of Shakespeare; to be followed in turn by a grave and sombre group of writers of which Massinger, Webster, Tourneur, and Ford, are typically representative. "Whatever may be assigned as the causes, it is indubitable, says Professor Arber, that there came over writers and readers" a mighty change. Strength saturated with gracefulness sought delight in majesty.... In each period there was most excellent strength and cunning but the spirit was different. In the former it was the breath of L'Allegro; in the latter that of Il Penseroso. " 1 I Intro: Bacon's Essays. A French critic has very exquisitely said that Shakespeare" is a friend whom Heaven has given to the unhappy of every age and every country. If it be true that the Elizabethan dramatists climbed often to the mountain tops and were watchers for the Dawn to flush over the world, it is equally true that their dwellings were for the most part among the marshlands of Sorrow. Running throughout the April writings of Spenser and the earlier dramatists there is a most poignant note of suffering. In Shakespeare, sadness and sweetness wrestle for mastery : in Shakespeare's successors, sorrow alone reigns predominant and unchallenged. As an example of Webster's tendency to brood over the sinister, Mr J. A. Symonds quotes the passage, man You speak as if a Should know what fowl is coffined in a baked meat Afore you cut it open. In Shakespeare the same macabre tendency is incipient; in fact, Mr Symonds's instance is identically matched by Petruchio's reference to Katherine's headgear as "a paltry cap, a custard coffin". 2 Massinger gives one the impression of a soul drowned deep in the unfathomed seas of trouble. Hallam considers him as a tragic writer "second only to Shakespeare. His genius "abounded in sweetness and dignity; "Apt to delineate the loveliness of Virtue and to delight in its recompense after trial his own disposition led him more willingly to pictures of moral beauty. A peculiar refinement, a mixture of gentleness and I Pensées de Shakespeare Chas. Nodier. 2 Taming of the Shrew. |