WRITTEN BY FRANCIS BACON TO THE EARL OF ESSEX AND HIS BRIDE, A. D. 1590

“The mystery of the Sonnets will never be unfolded.” —Richard Grant White, 1865.

“All is supposition; the mystery is insoluble.” —Dr. Charles Mackay, 1884.

The mystery unfolded by W. H. Burr, July 31, 1883.

The first published poem of Shakspere, so far as known, was “Venus and Adonis,” in 1593. It was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, then about twenty years of age. Five or six editions were called for in nine years. The “Sonnets” did not appear till 1609. The latter poem has 154 stanzas of 14 lines each; the first 126 are addressed to a beautiful and ardently beloved youth; the remainder to the young man’s betrothed.

As to the merits of the composition, the American Cyclopedia says:

“These ‘Sonnets,’ though deformed with occasional conceits, far surpass all other poems of their kind in our own language, or perhaps any other.”

The dedication is in these words:

“To the onlie begetter of " these insuing Sonnets " Mr. W. H. all happinesse " and that eternitie " promised by " our everliving poet " wisheth " the well-wishing " adventurer in " setting forth " T. T.”

[14]

Some have believed that “Mr. W. H.” was William Herbert; and a German critic supposes the initials to signify “William Himself.” But the American Cyclopedia says:

“To whom they were written, and in whose person is among the most difficult of unsolved literary problems.... Who this ‘onlie begetter’ was no man has yet been able satisfactorily to show.”(1)

(1) Dr. Charles Mackay attempts to solve the problem in an elaborate article in the Nineteenth Century, August, 1884, entitled “A Tangled Skein Unravelled.” He claims only to have found indications of mixed authorship. But this only makes the tangle worse, which began with Shakspere’s ostensible authorship; and the last despairing words of the astute un-raveller are: “All is supposition, the mystery is insoluble.”

In regard to the hypothesis that “W. H.” was William Herbert, the same authority says there is almost as much ground for the notion that the person addressed was Queen Elizabeth in doublet and hose.

In 1872 we first read Nathaniel Holmes’s “Authorship of Shakspere;” since then we have never entertained a reasonable doubt that Bacon was the author of the Plays. In 1882 we reread them all in the light of that discovery; but until July 31, 1883, we had never read a page of the “Sonnets,” nor when we began to read them on that day did we remember to have heard who “W. H.” was supposed to be. But coming to the twenty-fifth sonnet, we suspected that the poem was addressed to the Earl of Essex, and subsequent research confirmed that suspicion.

Herbert was sixteen years younger than Shakspere, and nineteen years younger than Bacon. If, therefore, the poem was written in 1590, which we purpose to show, it is impossible for Herbert to have been the

[15]

“onlie begetter of these Sonnets,” for he was then only ten years old.

Of course no one will date their composition as late as 1609, when Shakspere was forty-five and Bacon forty-eight. At that time the former had retired from the stage, and Bacon had been for six years King’s counsel and three years a married man. And certainly two sonnets (138 and 144) were composed as early as 1599, for they are repeated at the beginning of “The Passionate Pilgrim,” which was first published in that year.

All the internal and external evidence points to the year 1590 as the date, Francis Bacon as the writer, and the Earl of Essex as the person addressed.

It is said that Bacon made the acquaintance of Essex about 1590, but it would be remarkable if he did not know him years before. In sonnet 104 the poet says:

Let us suppose that Bacon began to cultivate the Earl’s friendship in 1590. He was then twenty-two years old; three years earlier, when Bacon first saw him, the Earl was “fresh now he is yet green.”(1)

1. A letter from Bacon to the Earl of Leicester, asking for his furtherance in some suit which the Earl of Essex had moved in his behalf, has recently been found, written in 1588. (Sped-ding’s “Bacon,” 1878, i, 50, note.)

Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, was born Nov. 10, 1567, and was beheaded for treason

[16]

Feb. 25, 1601. He succeeded to the title at ten years of age. At twenty he was appointed master of the horse. At twenty-one the Queen created him captain-general of the cavalry, and conferred on him the honor of the garter. In the same year an expedition was undertaken against Portugal, and he secretly followed the armament. This was without the Queen’s permission, but he was quickly reconciled with her after his return, and at once assumed a superiority over Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Charles Blount, rival competitors for royal favor. He was challenged by Blount and wounded in the knee, and the Queen is said to have expressed her gratification that some one had taken him down, as otherwise there would be no ruling him. He was an accomplished scholar and patron of literature. He erected a monument to Spenser and gave an estate to Bacon.

But we have omitted one striking characteristic which has an important bearing on the question of his identity with “Mr. W. H.” The young Earl of Essex was a remarkably handsome man. Now the beauty of the person addressed in the “Sonnets” is a constantly recurring theme, and the burden of the poem is an appeal to the beloved and beautiful young man to marry. It begins thus:

The next Sonnet begins:

The last line of Sonnet 13 reads:

[17]

The father of Essex died in 1576. In 1590 the second Earl married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, Essex being twenty-two years old and she a little younger. The marriage was secret to avoid the opposition of Elizabeth. By October, concealment was no longer possible, and on the 22d of January, 1591, (not 1592 as some have it,) the first child was born. (“Earls of Essex,” 1853.)

The mother of Essex was celebrated for her beauty; his father was not handsome. (See portrait in “Earls of Essex.”) The son’s inheritance of his mother’s features is told in the third Sonnet:

For further description of the young Earl’s beauty, take the following:

Essex having become the special favorite of the Queen, of course became an object of envy and slander. Mark now what the poet says:

In 1590 Bacon had acquired a reputation as an orator in the House of Commons, but was without available means of livelihood in keeping with his wants and station. Up to this time his efforts for promotion were thwarted by the Queen’s minister, Lord Burleigh (Cecil) who regarded him as a dangerous rival for his son. With the rise of young Essex into royal favor Bacon turned to him as a friend at court. From 1590 to 1594 the Earl tried in vain to advance Bacon, and at last, when the vacant office of Attorney General was filled by another, Essex, blaming himself for the disappointment, insisted on presenting him with an estate worth £1,800.

With these facts in mind, see how perfectly the following lines fit the persons and the time, 1590:

In 1590 Shakspere was part owner of a theater.

In 1590 Bacon obtained his first show of favor from the court; he became Queen’s counsel extraordinary, but the office was without emolument. At this time plays for the theater were written and rewritten again and again to meet the demand. Young lawyers and poets produced them rapidly. Each theatrical company kept from one to four poets in its pay (Amer. Cyc.) Shakspere appeared to be ready to father anything that promised success, and there are at least six plays published under his name or initials which most critics say are not his, nor have they ever appeared in the genuine canon. In 1591 a poem by Spenser was published containing these lines:

With kindly counter under mimic shade:

[20]

From 1590 until Shakspere retired from the stage, how could it be said that he was “poor,” bewailing his “outcast state” and “cursing his fate?” But it is certain that Bacon’s condition answered precisely to that description up to November, 1594, when Essex gave him an estate worth £1,800; aye, even until 1604, when King James granted him a pension of £60; if not even up to 1607.

Mark now the modesty of the poet in 1590:

We have already quoted a verse from Spenser in praise of “Willy,” first published in 1591; we now adduce a passage from one of “Willy” Bacon’s poems first published in 1599 in praise of Spenser:

This verse is in “The Passionate Pilgrim,” the first two numbers of which are Sonnets 138 and 144 with slight variations. John Dowland, a musician, was born

[21]

in 1562 and died 1625. Spenser was eight years older than Bacon.

But coupled with this modesty of the author of the “Sonnets,” note how he praises his friend and how famous that friend appears at the time:

The other superior (?) poet referred to is undoubtedly Spenser, among whose “Sonnets, addressed by the author to his friends and patrons,” in January, 1590, is one “To the most honorable and excellent Lord the Earl of Essex, great master of the horse to her highness, and knight of the noble order of the garter, etc.” Essex became master of the horse in 1587, and knight of the garter in 1588.

We proceed with the quotations from the Shaksperian Sonnets:

From Sonnet 42 it appears that the young Earl had won the heart of the widow Sidney:

The second part of the “Sonnets,” after 126, is addressed to the Earl’s bethrothed; we quote Sonnet 134:

[23]

Incidentally it may be noted how familiar the writer of the above lines must have been with the practice of law. Shakspere’s legal knowledge has amazed the lawyers.

The next Sonnet introduces the name of “Will,” and puns upon it profusely:

How preposterous to believe that a common-place play actor, with a wife and children, addressed such sentiments to the bride of his dearest friend! At no time do the sentiments or circumstances of the poem fit the person of the actor, of whom the dying and dissipated playwright, Greene, wrote in 1592:

“There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that with his Tygers heart, wrapt in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the onely Shake-scene in a countne.”

But, on the other hand, frequent evidence appears that Bacon, up to the time he was made Attorney-General in 1613, was constantly engaged in secret literary work. But not so secret as to be unknown

[24]

to a circle of friends and perchance a few enemies; for, in 1599, when he interceded with the Queen for his dear friend Essex, then under arrest on account of a treasonable pamphlet being dedicated to him, her Majesty flung at Bacon “a matter which grew from him, but went after about in others’ names,” being in fact the play of “Richard II,” which, in that and the preceding year, had a great run on the stage, and had gone through two editions, but, for prudential reasons, with the scene containing the deposition of the king left out.

But even in the “Sonnets” the fact appears that the author has been writing for the stage:

Here is not only a private confession of being compelled to produce plays for subsistence, but a sorrowful acknowledgment that thereby his “name receives a brand.”

Yet it must not be supposed that Bacon was publicly known at any time as a play writer. His first

[25]

publication, the “Essays,” was in 1597, and Shakspere’s name first appeared on the title page of a Play in 1598, by which time nearly half of the Plays had been written or sketched, and six had been printed, all without the author’s name. And when the first collection was published in the “Folio” of 1623, (seven years after Shakspere’s death,) it included some Plays never before heard of, and eighteen never before printed.

Lord Coke, who was Bacon’s most jealous rival and adversary, seems never to have suspected him of play writing. Nor did the watchful Puritanic mother of the two bachelors of Gray’s Inn ever dream that her studious younger son was engaged in such sinful work.

In Sonnet 76 the writer deplores his want of variety of style, and fears that this fault will almost disclose his secret authorship:

Bacon having begun to produce plays for Shakspere’s theater before 1590, the authorship of which was afterward assumed by the actor and proprietor, it became necessary also to avoid being publicly known as a writer of sonnets. Therefore, in view of the circulation and ultimate publication of this poem, he facetiously disguised the identity of the writer by calling himself “Will.” Three years later he dedicated a

[26]

published poem to his young friend Southampton under the name of “William Shakespeare,” and again another in 1594. But the “Sonnets” were not published until 1609, when Essex had been dead eight years, and his widow had been married six years to a third husband. It would never do for the Solicitor-General to be known as the author of such a poem; so when it came out in print it was dedicated to “Mr. W. H.” by “T. T.,” and no one until a few years ago ever seems to have suspected that Bacon wrote the poem, nor, so far as we are aware, has any one ever suspected until July 31, 1883, that “W. H.” was the accomplished and famous Earl of Essex.

The young widow Sidney was the only daughter of the Queen’s principal secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, for whom Bacon drafted an important state paper in 1588 on the conduct of the government toward Papists and Dissenters. And that Bacon was intimate with the Secretary’s daughter, aye, even one of her lovers, appears from many of the Sonnets addressed to her. He describes her playing on the harpsichord, envies the keys “that nimbly leap to kiss her hand,” and says:

And from other passages it is quite evident that he had often kissed her.

No fact has been found incompatible with Bacon’s authorship of the “Sonnets.” The following line might seem to indicate a writer past the age of 29:

But in 1599, when Shakspere was only 35, this very verse was published as his in the “Passionate Pilgrim,” where Sonnet 138 appears as number one.

[27]

But again, we have a letter written in 1592 by Bacon to his uncle, Lord Treasurer Burleigh, in which he says:

“I wax somewhat ancient; one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass.”

At the age of 31 he thinks himself “somewhat ancient” two years earlier he apprehends that forty winters will entirely deface the youthful Earl’s beauty; and to the lovely young widow he says: “My days are past the best.”

This misconception therefore, whether pretended or real, becomes a strong proof of Bacon’s authorship.

It has been boldly alleged by some that Bacon was no poet. Such, however, was not the judgment of his biographer, the late James Spedding. Before he could have heard it claimed that Shakspere did not write the plays he said that Bacon might have taken the highest rank as a poet. And that judgment was based upon the versification of a few Psalms by the old man on a sick bed. Since 1867 the substantial proofs of Bacon’s secret authorship have been adduced. Aside from innumerable parallels in the works of Bacon and Shakspere there is much external evidence. For example:

We know that Bacon wrote Sonnets to Queen Elizabeth and excused himself by saying: “I profess not to be a poet.”

We know that he composed Masques anonymously before Shakspere’s name appeared as a play writer, and that those Masques were essentially poetical compositions, in the nature of plays, and sometimes contained verses in rhyme equal in merit to the average of Shakspere’s.

[28]

In one of those Masques a speaker is made to say: “The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power; the verses of the poet endure without a syllable lost, while states and empires pass many periods.” Two years later, in 1596, the composer of that speech, writing to Sir Fulke Greville on his studies, said: “For poets I can commend none, being resolved to be ever a stranger to them.” Greville (1554-1628) was a poet, and wrote the life of Sir Philip Sidney.

In 1603 Bacon wrote a private letter to the poet John Davies, begging him to speak a good word for the writer to the incoming King James I., and closing with these words: “So, desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue.”

Bacon’s most intimate friend, Toby Matthew, in a letter with cancelled date, but as late as 1605, acknowledged the receipt of some work by Bacon, and added this postscript:

“I will not return you weight for weight, but Measure for Measure.”

“Mesur for Mesur,” by “Shaxberd,” was played before King James, at Whitehall, December 26, 1604.

Again, about the time of the publication of the Shakespere Folio, 1623, Matthew acknowledged in a letter without date, the receipt of a “great and noble favor,” and added the following:

“P. S.—The most prodigious wit that ever I knew, of my nation and of this side of the sea, is of your Lordship’s name, though he be known by another.”