The following extract from Mr. Smithson’s Article in The Nineteenth Century of November 1913, headed “Ben Jonson’s Pious Fraud,” may well stand as a preface to his now published Essay on Jonson’s Masque of Time Vindicated, which was written by him in the year 1919. The reader may also be referred to Chapters VI and VII of his Shakespeare-Bacon, published in 1899. It is odd that we Baconians, differing as we do from our opponents in so many points, should agree with them so entirely on one—the supreme importance of the testimony of Ben Jonson. This paper is mainly concerned with two of his utterances, the Ode in the First Folio, and the Prince’s Masque. Both the one and the other belong in point of composition to the same period, 1622-3. We will begin with the Masque completed no doubt a few months earlier than the Ode. In my opinion they were vital parts of one great scheme of which Bacon, i.e., Bacon-Shakespeare, was the subject. The genesis of the Prince’s Masque was probably on this wise: assuming that Bacon was bent on disowning his plays, the publication of them, however generous in intention, could at best be only a left-handed compliment to him. Consequently if the scheme was to yield any true satisfaction to its originators (or any suitable consolation to Bacon regarded as the victim of malicious if not disloyal persecution), it would have to give scope for some direct (ad virum) expression, in their own persons The Prince’s Masque had another, and for our purpose far more significant title—Time Vindicated to Himself and His Honours. Time, no Time of long ago, but the age that was then passing, had been slandered, taxed with being mean and dull and sterile, and the intention of the Masque or Pageant was to refute these calumnies in presence, not of an inquisitive world, but of Time’s living ornaments (as well as himself). If report speak true, it was presented on the 19th of January, 1623—the Sunday in that memorable year which fell nearest to Bacon’s birthday—presented in circumstances of unprecedented splendour, “the Prince leading the Measures with the French embassador’s wife.” The Masque (as given in Jonson’s Works) is sub-divided into Antimasque and Masque proper. Fame, the accredited mouthpiece of the author, is by far the most important personage in the Antimasque. Her first business is to proclaim that she has been sent to invite to that night’s “great spectacle,” not the many, but the few who alone were worthy to view it. An inquisitive mob nicknamed The Curious at once begins to heckle Fame. A thrasonical personage called Chronomastix, a caricature compounded in unequal proportions of George Wither and the Ovid Junior of Jonson’s Poetaster, then appears on the scene. Chronomastix, I may say in passing, seems to have deluded John Chamberlain, for he (J. C.) tells a correspondent that Jonson in the Prince’s Masque “runs a risk by impersonating George Withers as a whipper of the times, which is a dangerous jest.” At sight of Chronomastix The Curious jeer at Fame for not recognising their idol, while Chronomastix himself has the effrontery to call her his “mistress,” and tells her it is for her sake alone that he “revells so in rime.” Fame retorts (in effect): “Away thou wretched Impostor! My proclamation was not meant for thee or thy kind; goe revell with thine ignorant admirers. Following hard on this observation (of Fame’s) comes a dance, in which The Curious adore Chronomastix and then carry him off in triumph. Afterwards The Curious come up again, and one of them, addressing Fame, asks: “Now, Fame, how like you this?” Another chimes in: “He scornes you, Relieved of the presence of all who were unfit to view the “great Spectacle” now on the point of being exhibited “with all solemnity,” Fame at last lets herself go: “Commonly (says she) The Curious are ill-natured and, like flies, seek Time’s corrupted parts to blow upon, but may the sound ones live with fame and honour, free from the molestation of these insects.” The stage direction here runs: “Loud musique. To which the whole scene opens, where Saturne sitting with Venus is discovered above, and certaine Votaries coming forth below, which are the Chorus.” Addressing the King, Fame announces that Saturn (Time) urged by Venus (emblem of affection) had promised to set free “certaine glories of the Time,” which, though eminently fitted to “adorn that age,” had nevertheless for mysterious reasons been kept in “darknesse” by “Hecate (Queene of shades).” Venus puts in her word; assures Time that the liberation of the “glories” is a “worke (which) will prove his honour” as well as exceed “men’s hopes.” Saturn answers her gallantly and then addressing the Votaries says: “You shall not long expect: with ease the things come forth (that) are born to please. Looke, have you seene such lights as these?” This is the very climax of the Masque. “The Masquers (so runs the stage direction) are discovered and that which obscured them vanisheth.” The Votaries exclaim with rapture: “These, these must sure some wonders be.... What grief, or envie had it beene, that these and such had not beene seene, but still obscured in shade! Who are the glories of the Time ... and for the light were made!” (Who were these “glories” whom Fame, the Prince, Ben Jonson, and the rest had with difficulty rescued from the underworld, in whose behalf inquisitive intruders had been excluded, about whom absurd mistakes of identity had been made, and who according to Fame were destined to play parts in the The Masque ends with an exhortation to charity, the final words being: Man should not hunt mankind to death, But strike the enemies of man. Kill vices if you can: They are your wildest beasts: And when they thickest fall, you make the Gods true feasts. (Bearing in mind that Bacon was probably regarded by the audience as an ill-used man, this exhortation sorts well with what I take to be the true interpretation of the Masque. So does the motto with which it opens. In that motto Martial bids ill-natured censors to leave him alone and keep their venom for self-admirers, persons vain of their own achievements. From first to last, therefore, Time Vindicated seems to have been deliberately adjusted to Bacon.) The second part of this quasi-national scheme for doing honour to Shakespeare-Bacon falls now to be considered. The First Folio was published, it would seem, towards the end of 1623. Though not entered on the Stationers’ Register till November, it may well have been on the stocks before that, for the difficulties of collecting, arranging with interested printers, editing, adapting (The Tempest for example), and so forth, must have been extraordinary. The volume is introduced by some doggerel, signed “B. I.,” which tells the reader: This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; Wherein, etc. Derision and mystification, twin motives or causes of the guy Chronomastix, are equally the motives of this grotesque “figure.” Whether this were also intended to parody the doggerel inscribed on Shakespeare’s gravestone in Stratford Church may be open to doubt. That inscription runs: Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare To digge the dust encloased heare; Bleste be the man, etc. Warned by “B. I.” that laughter is in that air, we turn to the famous Ode itself which is signed “Ben: Ionson”(not “B. I.”) This Poem opens with a significant hint that the “name” Shakespeare, as distinct from his “book” and his “fame,” was a delicate subject to handle. After having assured himself with much ado that Shakespeare’s (true) name is now in no danger, Jonson proceeds to inform him that he (Shakesspeare) is alive still, “a moniment without a tombe.” Then comes the line: “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,” which is generally mistaken for a categorical statement that Shakespeare lacked Latin, whereas it should be understood as equivalent to “Supposing thou hadst small Latin,” etc. The word “would” in the next sentence (“From thence to honour thee I would not seek”) shows this to be the reading. Then come the triumphant verses in which, after having challenged “insolent Greece or haughtie Rome” to produce a greater than Shakespeare, Jonson exclaims: Triumph my Britaine, thou hast one to showe, To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time! And all the Muses still were in their prime, When like Apollo he came forth, etc. (Compare this with what Jonson wrote of Bacon not many years later: Bacon “is he, who hath filled up all numbers; and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. In short, within his view and about his times were all the wits born that could honour a language, or helpe study. Now things daily fall, wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward. So that hee may be named, and stand as the marke and akme of our language.... Hee seemed to mee ever, by his worke, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had beene in many Ages.” The similarity between the two eulogies strikes one the moment they are brought into juxtaposition, and this helps to explain the exclusion of the Ode from the collected Workes of Ben: Jonson: 1640-1.) After this rapturous outburst the mood changes, and we are bored by a number of didactic lines about the need of toil and sweat as well as genius, “for the good poet’s made as well as born.” The passage is one among many symptoms of Jonson’s long-standing quarrel with Shakespeareolators—a quarrel which at a later date found expression in the Discoveries—for refusing to see that the carelessness of their idol was at times not less conspicuous than his genius. Satisfied with having vindicated his own consistency, Jonson goes on On the heels of the lance-brandishing jest comes the passionate utterance: “Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were to see thee in our waters yet appeare, and make those flights upon the bankes of Thames, that so did take Eliza and our James!” (Here suggestio falsi is carried to the verge of the lie. What Jonson would have us think he felt about Warwick and its Avon is one thing. What he actually thought may be gathered from a fragment of rather later date in which he jeers at “Warwick Muses” for choosing a “Hoby-horse” as their favourite mount—“the Pegasus that uses to waite on Warwick Muses,” etc. Be this as it may, the ethics of the case would cause him no uneasiness. A secret had to be kept in deference to the wishes of one whom Jonson regarded as almost the greatest and most admirable of men, one too whose right to an incognito no living man of letters was likely to dispute.) Jonson’s yearning to see Shakespeare once more “upon the bankes of Thames” is suddenly arrested by a vision. Turning his poetic eye upwards and catching sight of the constellation Cygnus, he affects to be thrilled by the conceit that Shakespeare had been metamorphosed, “advanced” to a higher sphere—“the hemisphere” as he calls it. (The Ode belongs, as has been said, to 1622-23. Some ten or a dozen years earlier, Shakspere, preferring humdrum Stratford to London and poetry, had turned his back on the Capital. If this yearning had been uttered in 1612-13, instead of 1622-23, it might have been meant for the Stratford man. So with the vision and the thrill, if we could have referred them to 1616-17, they would have provoked no question. But as things stand, question is inevitable. Had the yearning been kept under since 1612, and why? The vision too and the thrill, what had they to do with the testator of 1616? What more likely than that Jonson had in his mind the social elevation of the wonderful man who The Ode closes on a note akin to despair at the low estate of Poetry ever since Shakespeare had ceased to enrich and adorn it. A similar note, it will be remembered, marks the close of Jonson’s appreciation of Bacon: “Now things daily fall: wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward” etc. Here again the thoughts of Jonson were evidently running on Shakespeare; for with Jonson Eloquence was Poetry, or rather—to speak by the book—Poetry was “the most prevailing Eloquence, and of the most exalted Charact.” The contention of this article may be compressed into one sentence: The Prince’s Masque and the famous Ode to Shakespeare were a signal act of homage in two parts to one man, and that man Francis Bacon. The proposition does not admit of demonstrative proof. High probability is all that is claimed, and if the claim be rejected the fault is with the advocate. Such being the Preface, let us now turn to the further Essay on the Masque of Time Vindicated, which Edward Smithson left for, alas, posthumous publication. Proprietas denique illa inseparabilis, quae Tempus ipsum sequitur, ut veritatem indies parturiat. De Aug: Scientiarum, 1623. The year 1623 was a memorable one for literature. First in order of date came a masterpiece of Ben Jonson’s, the Masque of Time Vindicated. This was followed by Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientiarum, an expanded version of his Advancement of Learning, written many years earlier. The finest gift of that year was the First Folio of Shakespeare. Time Vindicated consists of two violently contrasted parts; jest and earnest, antimasque and masque proper. The most conspicuous figure in the farcical part is CHRONOMASTIX, an The Masque proper opens with an address to King James, the gist of which is that “certaine glories of the Time,” till then artificially concealed, were about to be freed “at Love’s suit” or intercession because admirably fitted “to adorne the age.” The climax of the Masque follows this address almost immediately. The stage direction runs: “The Masquers are discovered, and that which obscur’d them, vanisheth.” The Chorus of the Masque is delighted by the vision of the Masquers, and cries out: “What griefe, or envie had it beene, that these, and such (as these) had not beene seene, but still obscur’d in shade! Who are the glories of the Time, ... and for the light were made!” The essential fiction of Time Vindicated, known also as The Prince’s Masque, is that Time had been reproached with incapacity to produce masterpieces comparable anyway with those of Greece and Rome; and that the revelation of these Masquers was a triumphant refutation of the calumny. To suppose that this result was achieved by the Prince and his companions would be to insult Ben Jonson, the Prince, and all concerned. The all-important feature of the revelation must have been the make-up of the Masquers. For several months previous to 1623 Jonso There are many and various indications to justify the hypothesis that the Masque as a whole was a tribute of love and admiration for “Shakespeare.” Here are some of them. (1) Love is the incentive to the freeing of the “wonders”—the “glories”—that so charmed the Chorus of the Masque. Love for “Shakespeare” was probably Jonson’s leading motive for undertaking all the drudgery connected with the First Folio. (2) The mention of “envie” by the Chorus gives one to think. Deprecation of envy is the burden of the enigmatical and portentous exordium of Jonson’s Ode to Shakespeare. (3) For reasons unexplained by his accredited biographers, the plays of Shakespeare had long been held back or secluded, but were then on the eve of publication or disclosure; not indeed “cured and perfect of their limbes”—to quote the editorial figment in the First Folio—but certainly less damaged, and imperfect than even Jonson, at an earlier stage, can have expected. (4) The audience of Time Vindicated is given to understand that “the Bosse of Belinsgate,” a nickname for Jonson, “has a male-poem in her belly now, big as a colt, Another significant feature of the Masque is the display of anxiety to safeguard the spectacular revelation of the Masquers from the attentions of inquisitive observers, an anxiety which requires the drastic expulsion of the Curious. This anxiety, as I read it, betokened a secret intimately connected with the First Folio. Before developing this contention, it may be well to clear the ground, not only of Heminge and Condell, but also of the Stratford gentleman’s representatives. Heminge and Condell were probably mere dummies who gave Jonson carte blanche to say in their names anything whether strictly true or not, which he thought conducive to the end in view; the prefatory address ostensibly subscribed by them is too Jonsonian to admit of any doubt on this score. As for “Mr. Shakspere,” he had long been dead The object of these precautions to secure secrecy must have been a persona grata to the King, Prince, and Court; this might go without saying. A significant conjuration against hunting “Mankind to death” suggests that he was also considered, by the Prince among others, a victim of malicious persecution. For other clues we have to go back to the Antimasque. The Curious have contrived to pick up several very useful items of information about the mysterious object in question. They know for instance that he is or has been served by printers and compositors so devoted to him, that they were quite content to “worke eyes out for him,” in dark holes and corners, the better to “conceale” them. They know too that a typical admirer of certain “poems,” which he was in the habit of carrying about “in his pocket,” made the ridiculous mistake of addressing his congratulations “to the wrong party”: to Chronomastix, the “subject” of the Antimasque, whom he mistook for the “Poet.” This blunder is crucial. The secret so ostentatiously safeguarded was a secret of pseudonymity. The Poet of the Masque (and of our quest)—the very antithesis of the blatant poetaster of the Antimasque—was a “maker” who concealed his personality behind a pen-name. The evidence that Francis Bacon was a “concealed” poet is incontestable. A private letter of The figure Chronomastix is not easy to range or class; for he is not a caricature proper. He salutes Fame with impudent assurance (in the Antimasque) as his “Deare Mistris” and tells her that “he revells so in rime” for no other “end” than “to serve Fame ... and get himselfe a name.” Fame, here as elsewhere, the mouthpiece of Jonson, browbeats the blatant creature: “Away, I know thee not, wretched Impostor, Creatire of glory, Mountebanke of witte, selfe-loving Braggart, ... Scorne of all the Muses, goe revell with thine ignorant admirers, let worthy names alone.” A little abashed by this rebuff, Chronomastix appeals to the Curious for sympathy; tells them that his “glorious front and word at large triumphs in print at my admirers charge”; and finishes his harangue by this invitation to his friends and admirers: “Come forth that love me, and now or never, spight of Fame, approve me.” Chronomastix therefore whatever he be, is the very antithesis of a self-effacing poet or maker. He belongs I think to the Turn we now from the figure Chronomastix, to the “Figure” which mars the front page of the First Folio: the sorry “Figure ... wherein the Graver had a strife with Nature to out-doo the life”; as “B. J.” (Ben Jonson) significantly informs “the Reader.” “B. J.’s” innuendo does not stop here; he follows it up by explicitly warning all readers to “looke not on” the “picture,” but on the “Booke.” The warning seems almost superfluous; for the effigy cannot be identified with portrait or bust of any human being. Twin brother to Chronomastix, the thing is a freak expressly designed to prevent inquisitive persons, ourselves among others, from scrutinising the fiction then launched on the world. Reverting once more to the Antimasque and the orgiastic dance at the end of which the Curious carry away their deity Chronomastix: one or other of the deluded adorers taunts Fame in these words: “He scornes you and defies you, h’as got a Fame on’s owne, as well as a Faction, and these will deifie him, to despite you.” Fame replies: “I envie not the Apotheosis. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” When these words were spoken, it is quite possible that neither the figure, nor the Ode, nor the prefatory addresses had reached finality. But Jonson’s inside knowledge of the From the point of view of the privileged few who were in the secret, Time Vindicated and the Shakespeare Folio were, I consider, parts of a superlative Act of Homage to the greatest of modern poets. From Jonson’s special point of view they were a pious fraud, in which at the behest of disinterested love and admiration for Bacon, he consented to undertake the chief rÔle. After the death of Bacon Jonson’s mood may have undergone some modification. Certain it is that the Ode, his finest poem, is excluded from the first edition, Vol. II, of his collected Works, and that in his Discoveries he tells “posterity” certain truths about Shakespeare which were not even suggested in the Ode. Hitherto our thoughts have been preoccupied with Ben Jonson. They shall now be devoted Here it is to be observed that the proceeds of sale of the Shakespeare Folio, “printed at his admirers’ charge,” would help towards relieving the fallen man’s pecuniary distress, whilst the august compliment conveyed by the Masque would tend to soothe his lacerated feelings. The attitude of a concealed poet to his art is rarely explicit, or concealment would be next to impossible. In this connection I ask leave to quote from an Essay, Shakespeare-Bacon, by E. W. S., published many years ago. A question that has probably been intriguing some of my readers is: Why did Bacon abandon the poet’s Crown to which his genius entitled him? From among the complex of conceivable reasons it will suffice to pick out three. (1) In dedicating the De Augmentis Scientiarum to Prince Charles, 1623, Bacon writes: “It is a book I think will live, and be a citizen of the world which English books are not.” Again, a letter, of about the same date, to an intimate friend contains this passage: “For these modern languages will play the bank-rowtes with books; and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it with posterity.” “Play the bank-rowtes” means, I suppose, put a stop to the currency; and “lost much time with this age [Note by the Editor]. There appears to be no doubt that in “Chronomastix” Jonson was lampooning George Wither, whose “Abuses Stript and Whipt, or Satiricall Essayes,” was published by Budge in 1622, (there had been an earlier edition in 1613) and was followed by a poem called “The Scourge.” In “Abuses Stript and Whipt” we find the following lines: There is also an Epigram to “Time,” in which Wither asks: Now swift-devouring, bald, and ill-fac’t Time, Dost not thou blush to see thyself uncloak’t? Another Epigram is to “Satyro-Mastix,” the last lines of which are: Then scourge of Satyrs hold thy whip from mine, Or I will make my rod lash thee and thine. “Withers Motto” (1621) was “nec habeo nec careo nec curo.” This was satirised by John Taylor, the Water-Poet, in the words “et habeo, et careo, et curo,” and is obviously alluded to in Jonson’s Masque, where “Nose” says “The gentleman-like Satyre cares for nobody.” Wither, moreover, quarrelled with the Stationers’ Company and the printers (who disapproved of his independent method of business), which also was a subject for Jonson’s ridicule in the Masque: One is his Printer in disguise, and keepes His presse in a hollow tree, where to conceale him, He workes by glow-worme light, the moon’s too open, etc., etc. In the Dict: of National Biography we are told that “Jonson quarrelled with Alex. Gill the elder for having quoted Wither’s work with approval in his ‘Logonomia Anglica’ (1619), and Jonson revenged himself by caricaturing Wither under the title of ‘Chronomastix’ in the Masque of Time Vindicated presented at Court 1623-4,” and allusion is made to Jonson’s sarcasm with regard to Wither’s quarrel with his printers. Further, we find John Chamberlain writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, on January 25, 1622-3, as follows with reference to the Masque of Time Vindicated: “Ben Jonson they say is like to hear of it on both sides of the head for personating These facts seem to have been well known to Mr. Smithson, for not only does he quote John Chamberlain’s letter in his Nineteenth Century article, where he expresses the opinion that “Chronomastix” is “a caricature compounded in unequal proportions of George Wither and the Ovid Junior of Jonson’s Poetaster (as to which see an interesting chapter in Shakespeare-Bacon, headed “A Caricature of some Notable Elizabethan Poet,” together with the chapter following), but among his manuscripts were found certain Notes with reference to George Wither which I cite lower down. It will be seen, however, that he was convinced that Jonson, while lampooning and ridiculing Wither, the scourger of the time, had for his main object the glorification of the Shakespearean drama under cover of a Masque—those glorious works wherein “Time,” which had been vilified by Wither, found its all-sufficient and splendid “Vindication.” The following are Mr. Smithson’s Notes to which I have made reference: “Wither sends Abroad a Satyr with a scourge; That to their shame for this abuse shall strip them, And being naked in their vices whip them. (Abuses Stript and Whipt. Ed. 1622, p. 305.) He gives Justices of Peace a warning lest they be put out of the Commission for partiality (p. 318). Ruffling Cavaliars also are touched (p. 320). In the address to the reader of Shepheard’s Hunting, Wither to some extent recants his disgust at Time—says he has been ‘persuaded to entertain a better opinion of the Times than I lately conceived, and assured myself, that Virtue had far more followers than I supposed.’ Curiously enough, therefore, Wither’s frame of mind in 1622 I don’t think Wither knows why, or by whom he was persecuted. (See Philarate to Willy in Eclogue I, and last page but two of ‘Address to the Reader.’) He calls Time ‘bald and ill-fac’d,’ ‘shameless time,’ speaks of his ‘deformities,’ ‘blockish age,’ that ‘truth’ in this age gets ‘hatred,’ ‘while love and charitie are fled to heaven.’ He took upon him to scourge Time, and he was certainly arrogant enough, in form at any rate, for Chronomastix. I therefore take him to have been the stalking-horse or blind used by Jonson, the Prince, and some others, to conceal the true object.” |