THE CASE AGAINST BACON: Works Lack Drama And Intensity [Was Re: Some Bacon Investigation].
Elizabeth Weir
Chris has written a concise summary of the Case Against Bacon that
demands an answer.
Setting aside the fact only Bacon has direct evidence of authorship
of the Shakespeare works--the four rivals have not so much as a
postage stamp-sized scrap of direct documented evidence between
them--the most important question is whether or not Bacon possessed
the rare attributes necessary to write the Shakespeare works.
There's no doubt that Bacon was a polymath, a genius and a
very great philosopher. All of those qualifications
are crucial--indespensible--for authorship of the Shakespeare
works [and again, the adherents of the four rivals can produce
no evidence that their candidates were polymaths, geniuses or
philosophers] but an answer to the concern about Bacon's poetic
ability requires a response.
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Was Bacon capable of writing with "drama and intensity?'
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Macaulay, who initiated the campaign of character assassination
against Francis Bacon, believed that Bacon had "poetic faculty."
The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind,
but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to unsurp
the place of his reason and to tyrannize over the whole man.
No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly
subjugated.---Macaulay
Macaulay had a particular faculty for character assassination as
his contemporaries noted.
Macaulay was, as were Bacon and Shakespeare, addicted to the
rhetorical device of antithesis.
Unlike Bacon and Shakespeare, Macaulay used antithesis destructively,
not only against Bacon but against contemporaries as well as other
historical figures.
Winston Churchill called Macaulay "prince of literary rogues" and
Lord Acton said "his essays. . .are a key to half the prejudices
of our age."
Macaulay, in the opinion of his peers, didn't care what destruction
he wrought as long as it got him notoriety.
Some who have thought Bacon had a "powerful poetic faculty" but didn't
feel compelled to destroy Bacon as they praised him:
Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and
majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense, no less than
the almost super-human wisdom of his philosophy satisfies
the intellect. ~~ Shelley
We have only to open The Advacement of Learning to see
how the Attic bees clustered above the cradle of the
new philosophy. Poetry pervaded the thoughts, it inspires
the similes, it hymned in the majestic sentences of the
wisest of mankind.
~~Bulwar Lytton,Earl of Lytton, poet and
essayist.
To The Advancement of Learning he brings every species of
poetry by which imagination an elevate the mind from the
dungeon of the body to the enjoying of its own essence . . .
Metaphors, similes, and analogies make up a great part of his
reasoning. . .Ingenuity, poetic fancy and the highest imagination
cannot be denied him.
~~Strat Prof. Craik, co-ed. of Arden eds.
Bacon's biographer, the eminent classical scholar Spedding, was
very conservative in both his approach to scholarship and his
opinions.
I infer from this sample that Bacon had all the natural
faculties which a poet wants-- a fine ear for metre, a
fine feeling for imaginative effect in words, and a vein
of poetic passion. ~~James Spedding, Life of Francis Bacon,
(1857-74)
Bacon's poetic "inability" is judged mainly on his paraphrases of
the psalms which, although he was "aging and on a bed of sickness"
when he wrote them are still superior to Milton's poetizing of the
same psalms [Theobald] yet we don't deny that Milton wrote
Paradise Lost because his psalms are inferior.
Bacon's contemporaries praised his poetic faculty, even genius,
as in John Davies of Hereford's wonderful sonnet in which he
calls Bacon the "Bellamour of the Muse" who "sports with him
twix't grave affair:"
Note that John Davies is the recipient of the letter in which Bacon
closes with the line "so desiring you to be good to concealed poets."
To the Royall Ingenious and All-learned Knight,
Sir Francis Bacon.
Thy bounty and the beauty of thy witt
Compris'd in lists of Law and learned Arts,
Each making thee for great Imployment fitt,
Which now thou hast (though short of thy deserts,)
Compells my pen to let fall shining Inke
And to bedew the Baies that deck thy Front,
And to thy Health in Helicon to drinke,
As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont,
For thou dost her embosom; and dost use
Her company for sport twixt grave affaires:
So utter'st Law the livelyer through thy Muse.
And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires;
My Muse thus notes thy worth in ev'ry line,
With ynke which thus she sugars; so, to shine.
John Davies of Hereford, Scourge of Folly (c.1610).
John W. Kennedy
> Setting aside the fact only Bacon has direct evidence of authorship
> of the Shakespeare works--
No, the direct evidence, without exception, is that William
Shakespeare wrote them.
Stop lying.
--
John W. Kennedy
Those in the seat of power oft forget their failings and seek only the
obeisance of others! Thus is bad government born! Hold in your heart
that you and the people are one, human beings all, and good government
shall arise of its own accord! Such is the path of virtue!
-- Kazuo Koike, "Lone Wolf and Cub: Thirteen Strings" (tr. Dana Lewis)
Elizabeth Weir
> Elizabeth Weir wrote:
> > Setting aside the fact only Bacon has direct evidence of authorship
> > of the Shakespeare works--
>
> No, the direct evidence, without exception, is that William
> Shakespeare wrote them.
>
> Stop lying.
The Burgher of Stratford has prima facie evidence in the
form of printed title pages. That's not direct evidence.
Start thinking.
Art Neuendorffer
>> Setting aside the fact only Bacon has direct evidence
>> of authorship of the Shakespeare works--
John W. Kennedy wrote:
> No, the direct evidence, without exception,
> is that William Shakespeare wrote them.
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Middlemarch - George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans):
direct evidence was furnished not only by a clerk
at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode herself,
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Orthodoxy - G. K. Chesterton:
A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human
sacrifice were once innocent & general and that they gradually
dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small
amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens:
There were many such whispers as these in circulation;
but the truth appears to be that, after the lapse of some five
years (during which there is no direct evidence of her having been
seen at all), two wretched people were more than once observed to
crawl at dusk from the inmost recesses of St Giles's, and to take
their way along the streets, with shuffling steps and cowering
shivering forms, looking into the roads and kennels as
they went in search of refuse food or disregarded offal.
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Descent of Man - Charles Darwin:
To maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no
animal during the course of ages has progressed in intellect
or other mental faculties, is to beg the question
of the evolution of species.
Origin of Species - Charles Darwin:
In monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence of the
possibility of one organ being transformed into another;
The undulatory theory of light has thus been arrived at; and
the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis
was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence.
Voyage of the Beagle - Charles Darwin:
It may be asked, whether I can offer any direct evidence
of the subsidence of barrier-reefs or atolls; but it must
be borne in mind how difficult it must ever be to detect a
movement, the tendency of which is to hide under water. . .
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Sherlock Holmes, COMPLETE WORKS COMBINED - Doyle, A. Conan:
"It is all very clear. But why suspect the governess?"
"Well, in the first place there is some very direct evidence.
A revolver with one discharged chamber and
a calibre which corresponded with the bullet
was found on the floor of her wardrobe."
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Art Neuendorffer
Bob Grumman
>
> >> Setting aside the fact only Bacon has direct evidence
> >> of authorship of the Shakespeare works--
>
> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>
> > No, the direct evidence, without exception,
> > is that William Shakespeare wrote them.
Has any scholar in any discipline's formal definition of "direct evidence"
been widely accepted? My guess is that scholars define what they mean by
such terms in their works. So perhaps there is no agreed-upon meaning for
"direct evidence." I am sure no one defines it as Elizabeth does, if she
actually defines it rather than simply states our side doesn't have it.
--Bob G.