English Literature
so-called blood tragedies of the Elizabethan period, from Thomas Kyd's
_Spanish Tragedy_ down, however much they may condemn the brutal taste of
the English audiences, are still only so many search lights thrown upon a
history of horrible darkness.
THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570?-1627). Middleton is best known by two great plays,
_The Changeling_[156] and _Women Beware Women_. In poetry and diction they
are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare's plays; otherwise, in
their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense
and are repulsive to the modern reader. Two earlier plays, _A Trick to
catch the Old One_, his best comedy, and _A Fair Quarrel_, his earliest
tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable,
because they seem to express Middleton's own idea of the drama rather than
that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his later age.
THOMAS HEYWOOD (1580?-1650?). Heywood's life, of which we know little in
detail, covers the whole period of the Elizabethan drama. To the glory of
that drama he contributed, according to his own statement, the greater
part, at least, of nearly two hundred and twenty plays. It was an enormous
amount of work; but he seems to have been animated by the modern literary
spirit of following the best market and striking while the financial iron
is hot. Naturally good work was impossible, even to genius, under such
circumstances, and few of his plays are now known. The two best, if the
reader would obtain his own idea of Heywood's undoubted ability, are _A
Woman killed with Kindness_, a pathetic story of domestic life, and _The
Fair Maid of the West_, a melodrama with plenty of fighting of the popular
kind.
THOMAS DEKKER (1570-?). Dekker is in pleasing contrast with most of the
dramatists of the time. All we know of him must be inferred from his works,
which show a happy and sunny nature, pleasant and good to meet. The reader
will find the best expression of Dekker's personality and erratic genius in
_The Shoemakers' Holiday_, a humorous study of plain working people, and
_Old Fortunatus_, a fairy drama of the wishing hat and no end of money.
Whether intended for children or not, it had the effect of charming the
elders far more than the young people, and the play became immensely
popular.
MASSINGER, FORD, SHIRLEY. These three men mark the end of the Elizabethan
drama. Their work, done largely while the struggle was on between the
actors and the corrupt court, on one side, and the Puritans on the other,
shows a deliberate turning away not only from Puritan standards but from
the high ideals of their own art to pander to the corrupt taste of the
upper classes.
Philip Massinger (1584-1640) was a dramatic poet of great natural ability;
but his plots and situations are usually so strained and artificial that
the modern reader finds no interest in them. In his best comedy, _A New Way
to Pay Old Debts_, he achieved great popularity and gave us one figure, Sir
Giles Overreach, which is one of the typical characters of the English
stage. His best plays are _The Great Duke of Florence, The Virgin Martyr_,
and _The Maid of Honour_.
John Ford (1586-1642?) and James Shirley (1596-1666) have left us little of
permanent literary value, and their works are read only by those who wish
to understand the whole rise and fall of the drama. An occasional scene in
Ford's plays is as strong as anything that the Elizabethan Age produced;
but as a whole the plays are unnatural and tiresome. Probably his best play
is _The Broken Heart_ (1633). Shirley was given to imitation of his
predecessors, and his very imitation is characteristic of an age which had
lost its inspiration. A single play, _Hyde Park_, with its frivolous,
realistic dialogue, is sometimes read for its reflection of the fashionable
gossipy talk of the day. Long before Shirley's death the actors said,
"Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone." Parliament voted to close the
theaters, thereby saving the drama from a more inglorious death by
dissipation.[157]
VI. THE PROSE WRITERS
FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
In Bacon we see one of those complex and contradictory natures which are
the despair of the biographer. If the writer be an admirer of Bacon, he
finds too much that he must excuse or pass over in silence; and if he takes
his stand on the law to condemn the avarice and dishonesty of his subject,
he finds enough moral courage and nobility to make him question the justice
of his own judgment. On the one hand is rugged Ben Jonson's tribute to his
power and ability, and on the other Hallam's summary that he was "a man
who, being intrusted with the highest gifts of Heaven, habitually abused
them for the poorest purposes of earth--hired them out for guineas,
places, and titles in the service of injustice, covetousness, and
oppression."
Laying aside the opinions of others, and relying only upon the facts of
Bacon's life, we find on the one side the politician, cold, calculating,
selfish, and on the other the literary and scientific man with an
impressive devotion to truth for its own great sake; here a man using
questionable means to advance his own interests, and there a man seeking
with zeal and endless labor to penetrate the secret ways of Nature, with no
other object than to advance the interests of his fellow-men. So, in our
ignorance of the secret motives and springs of the man's life, judgment is
necessarily suspended. Bacon was apparently one of those double natures
that only God is competent to judge, because of the strange mixture of
intellectual strength and moral weakness that is in them.
LIFE. Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and
of the learned Ann Cook, sister-in-law to Lord Burleigh, greatest of the
queen's statesmen. From these connections, as well as from native gifts, he
was attracted to the court, and as a child was called by Elizabeth her
"Little Lord Keeper." At twelve he went to Cambridge, but left the
university after two years, declaring the whole plan of education to be
radically wrong, and the system of Aristotle, which was the basis of all
philosophy in those days, to be a childish delusion, since in the course of
centuries it had "produced no fruit, but only a jungle of dry and useless
branches." Strange, even for a sophomore of fourteen, thus to condemn the
whole system of the universities; but such was the boy, and the system!
Next year, in order to continue his education, he accompanied the English
ambassador to France, where he is said to have busied himself chiefly with
the practical studies of statistics and diplomacy.
Two years later he was recalled to London by the death of his father.
Without money, and naturally with expensive tastes, he applied to his Uncle
Burleigh for a lucrative position. It was in this application that he used
the expression, so characteristic of the Elizabethan Age, that he "had
taken all knowledge for his province." Burleigh, who misjudged him as a
dreamer and self-seeker, not only refused to help him at the court but
successfully opposed his advancement by Elizabeth. Bacon then took up the
study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1582. That he had not lost his
philosophy in the mazes of the law is shown by his tract, written about
this time, "On the Greatest Birth of Time," which was a plea for his
inductive system of philosophy, reasoning from many facts to one law,
rather than from an assumed law to particular facts, which was the
deductive method that had been in use for centuries. In his famous plea for
progress Bacon demanded three things: the free investigation of nature, the
discovery of facts instead of theories, and the verification of results by
experiment rather than by argument. In our day these are the A, B, C of
science, but in Bacon's time they seemed revolutionary.
As a lawyer he became immediately successful; his knowledge and power of
pleading became widely known, and it was almost at the beginning of his
career that Jonson wrote, "The fear of every one that heard him speak was
that he should make an end." The publication of his _Essays_ added greatly
to his fame; but Bacon was not content. His head was buzzing with huge
schemes,--the pacification of unhappy Ireland, the simplification of
English law, the reform of the church, the study of nature, the
establishment of a new philosophy. Meanwhile, sad to say, he played the
game of politics for his personal advantage. He devoted himself to Essex,
the young and dangerous favorite of the queen, won his friendship, and then
used him skillfully to better his own position. When the earl was tried for
treason it was partly, at least, through Bacon's efforts that he was
convicted and beheaded; and though Bacon claims to have been actuated by a
high sense of justice, we are not convinced that he understood either
justice or friendship in appearing as queen's counsel against the man who
had befriended him. His coldbloodedness and lack of moral sensitiveness
appear even in his essays on "Love" and "Friendship." Indeed, we can
understand his life only upon the theory that his intellectuality left him
cold and dead to the higher sentiments of our humanity.
During Elizabeth's reign Bacon had sought repeatedly for high office, but
had been blocked by Burleigh and perhaps also by the queen's own shrewdness
in judging men. With the advent of James I (1603) Bacon devoted himself to
the new ruler and rose rapidly in favor. He was knighted, and soon
afterwards attained another object of his ambition in marrying a rich wife.
The appearance of his great work, the _Advancement of Learning_, in 1605,
was largely the result of the mental stimulus produced by his change in
fortune. In 1613 he was made attorney-general, and speedily made enemies by
using the office to increase his personal ends. He justified himself in his
course by his devotion to the king's cause, and by the belief that the
higher his position and the more ample his means the more he could do for
science. It was in this year that Bacon wrote his series of _State Papers_,
which show a marvelous grasp of the political tendencies of his age. Had
his advice been followed, it would have certainly averted the struggle
between king and parliament that followed speedily. In 1617 he was
appointed to his father's office, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and the next
year to the high office of Lord Chancellor. With this office he received
the title of Baron Verulam, and later of Viscount St. Alban, which he
affixed with some vanity to his literary work. Two years later appeared his
greatest work, the _Novum Organum_, called after Aristotle's famous
_Organon_.
Bacon did not long enjoy his political honors. The storm which had been
long gathering against James's government broke suddenly upon Bacon's head.
When Parliament assembled in 1621 it vented its distrust of James and his
favorite Villiers by striking unexpectedly at their chief adviser. Bacon
was sternly accused of accepting bribes, and the evidence was so great that
he confessed that there was much political corruption abroad in the land,
that he was personally guilty of some of it, and he threw himself upon the
mercy of his judges. Parliament at that time was in no mood for mercy.
Bacon was deprived of his office and was sentenced to pay the enormous fine
of 40,000 pounds, to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and
thereafter to be banished forever from Parliament and court. Though the
imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was largely remitted,
Bacon's hopes and schemes for political honors were ended; and it is at
this point of appalling adversity that the nobility in the man's nature
asserts itself strongly. If the reader be interested to apply a great man's