Who Wrote Don Quixote?
art
Who Wrote Don Quixote?
Cervantes, England and Don Quixote
by Francis Carr
http://www.sirbacon.org/links/carrquixote.html
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"If a man will begin with certainties,
he will end in doubts;
but if he will be content to begin with doubts,
he will end in certainties."--Sir Francis Bacon
****
<<England, in the opinion of the French historian, Roger de Manvel,
"Has held Cervantes to her heart as though he were her very own son.
Don Quixote is certainly an un-Spanish book in many ways."
England was the first country to produce a complete version of the
book in a foreign language, and it was the English in the 17th
century, not the Spaniards, who most keenly read and used stories from
the work in their own writings. For two and a half centuries Spain
treated Cervantes and Don Quixote with disdain. It was not until 1738
that a critical study of the author appeared, and only two more
studies were published in the 18th century, in 1780 and 1798. The
first Spanish biography of Cervantes, by Gregorio Mayans, appeared in
1738, 122 years after his death, a commission by Lord Carteret, the
English Secretary of State. It was only in the second half of the 19th
century that Spaniards began to appreciate this masterpiece. In a
study of Don Quixote, edited by M. J. Bernadete and A. Flores,
published in 1932, the editors began their work with the admission
that it was only in the last thirty years that the Spaniards "have
rediscovered Cervantes."
With justification Spaniards have seen Don Quixote as a caricature of
many of their national traits. Understanding these feelings of hurt
pride, de Hanvel thought it strange that this book is the work of a
Spaniard. "I do not doubt, " he declared, "that there are some who
would receive with great satisfaction a proof that the author was an
Irishman."
What evidence is there that Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote?
There is no manuscript, no letter, no diary, no will, no document that
proves that he wrote this masterpiece. There is no portrait, no marked
grave, and no record of any payment for it, although it became popular
during his lifetime. What do we know about Thomas Shelton, whose
translation has won the praise of literary historians ever since it
appeared in England in 1612? What do we know of Cid Hamet Benengeli,
the Arab historian, who, we are told by Cervantes, is the real author?
What does it matter you may ask. It matters for two very important
reasons. Research leads us to the real author -- and it solves the
Shakespeare authorship question.
Isn't Cervantes the real author of Don Quixote? I have recently
completed a book, entitled Who Wrote Don Quixote?, in which I give
evidence on every page that this work was written not by a Spaniard,
but by an Englishman, Francis Bacon.
When someone makes a claim which sounds absurd, ridiculous,
impossible, he should immediately put forward historical facts which
demonstrate that he may, after all, be correct.
What do we know about Cervantes? We know the date of his death --
April 23, 1616. A familiar date, the date of Shakespeare's death. The
two dates are the same, in the records; but as the English calendar
differed by ten days, Cervantes died, in the English calendar, on
April 13. No friar or nun, no member of Cervantes' family, no friend
took the trouble to mark his grave. He never lived in the house now
shown to tourists as his own in Esquivias, and Catalina, his wife,
never owned any property in the street named after her, Calle de Dona
Catalina. The house where Cervantes was born, in Alcala de Henares,
was pulled down in 1955. Over and over again in Don Quixote -- 33
times in fact -- we are told that the real author is an Arab
historian, Cid Hamet Benengeli. There is no such person. Cid is a
Spanish title, a lord; it is a word of high esteem. Hamet is one
letter short of Hamlet; Ben is Hebrew for son, Engeli could mean of
England.
Another non-existent person is Thomas Shelton, the first translator of
Don Quixote. There is no trace of a man with this name at that time --
1605, when Quixote first appeared in Madrid, or in 1612 when it was
published in London. Again we are given a fictitious name. Why?
On May 11, 1606, only a few months after Don Quixote was published in
Madrid, Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain telling him that
Francis Bacon had married Alice Barnham. Two sentences further on he
wrote:
. I send you Don Quixote's challenge, which is translated into all
languages, and sent into the wide world.
What do we know about the mysterious translator, Thomas Shelton? We
have only one letter from him, which he placed at the beginning of his
version of Don Quixote. It tells us something of great importance, in
the first sentence:
. Having Translated some five or six years ago, The Historie of Don
Quixote, in the space of forty days . . .
The book was registered in London in January 1611. Shelton in this
letter says that he wrote his version, or his translation, five or six
years ago, which takes us back to 1605. Don Quixote in Spanish was
published in Madrid in January 1605. And, of course, Shelton does not
expect us to accept that he wrote the English version -- over 500
pages in forty days. He means us to look deeper into the whole
question of authorship.
On the first page of the Author's Preface to the Reader, Cervantes
tells us that he is not the author; he is "the stepfather." This is
the only book of any language which has been disowned by the man who
is supposed to be its author.
Many indications, many clues, are found in the text itself. I have
found seventy quotations in Don Quixote which appear in the works of
Francis Bacon, or Shakespeare -- or both.
. One swallow does not make a summer.
. All is not gold that glisters.
. He that gives quickly, gives twice.
. God and St. George!
. Might overcomes right.
. He that is warned is half armed.
. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
. Know thyself.
. Look not a given horse in the mouth.
. The weakest go to the wall.
. Comparisons are odious.
. The nearer the Church, the further from God
. honorificabilitudinitatibus
. the golden age
. Murder will out.
. The naked truth.
. I was born free.
. Walls have ears.
. Time out of mind.
But why the secrecy? Why should any man take the trouble to write a
novel and pretend that it was written by a foreigner, and allow it to
be published first in a foreign country?
It is a question that is not easily answered. All we can do is place
Don Quixote in its correct setting, among the other great masterpieces
produced in Europe at this time, the great Shakespeare plays. What
plainly emerges from this juxtaposition, is the European -- not just
English -- dimension. The greatest, most famous play about Scotland is
Macbeth. The greatest plays about Italy are Romeo and Juliet, The
Merchant of Venice and Othello, the Moor of Venice. The greatest play
about ancient Rome is Julius Caesar. The greatest play about ancient
Egypt is Antony and Cleopatra. The greatest play about Denmark is
Hamlet. These seven plays were written by the same man, and many
believe they were written under a pen-name. One leading European
nation is conspicuous by its absence in this catalogue of
masterpieces. There is no world-famous play about Spain, which is on
the same level of genius as the plays just mentioned; but there is one
great novel about Spain which is just as famous throughout the world--
Don Quixote. The hero, everyone agrees, is not a typical Spaniard, but
the setting is Spain, and with this masterpiece Spain is placed firmly
on the literary map of Europe.
Before rejecting the possibility that Bacon wrote both Quixote and the
Shakespeare plays, I would ask you to take one very important fact
into consideration.
Shakespeare and Cervantes were contemporaries. Geniuses are very rare
birds. Only a handful have appeared in the whole history of the human
race. When two appear at the the same time, we should pay special
attention, because this happens so very rarely. Imagine living in
Vienna in the latter part of the 18th Century, when Mozart and Haydn
were both composing and performing! Or in the early 16th Century, when
Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were painting in Florence.
In the early 17th Century we could meet Shakespeare and Cervantes. But
they never met. Four writers have put pen to paper to see if some sort
of connection can be found. They have all failed. Anthony Burgess
wrote a short story, entitled A Meeting in Valladolid, in which
Shakespeare comes to Spain and meets Cervantes. (The Devil's Mode,
1989). Pure fiction, of course. Charles Hamilton, the American
scholar, has written a short chapter on the two writers in his new
edition of what he thinks is the anonymous play, Cardenio, which was
put on in London in 1612. He finds no connection. Salvador de
Madariaga, the Spanish author, brings the two men closer to each other
by finding many links between Hamlet and Don Quixote: Carlos Fuentes,
the Mexican novelist and critic, goes as far, in Myself with Others,
to say
. It is stated that perhaps Cervantes and Shakespeare were the same
man.
I can read your thoughts. How in heaven's name can one man write not
only all the 37 Shakespeare plays and Don Quixote? The man who wrote
Hamlet and King Lear was able to write other masterpieces. If he wrote
a novel, we would expect it to be in the same category. In adding Don
Quixote to the great output of the author of the Shakespeare plays we
are not asking too much of him, any more than the Archbishop of
Salzburg was asking when he commissioned Mozart to write yet another
Mass. Don Quixote is a long novel, over 900 pages; but quantity, as
well as quality, is a feature of the works of great minds which should
be considered. Haydn wrote one hundred and four symphonies; Mozart
wrote forty-one, and 27 piano concertos. The letters of the great
letter-writing genius, Horace Walpole, fill forty-seven volumes. If
the author of Hamlet wrote Don Quixote, then this novel is just one
more masterpiece from his pen.
Not one Spanish or English critic has given any real thought to the
importance of the date of Don Quixote-- 1605. The long and bitter war
with Spain was over. Writers in Spain vented their wrath on England in
poetry and prose. Here is another reason for Bacon's anonymity.
Quixote appeared in Madrid in 1605, only six years after the Fourth
Armada -- after the 1588 Armada, Spain tried three more times to
invade us.
If it bore the name of an English author, everyone would have been
understandably prejudiced against it. As it was, Don Quixote took a
long time to win the lasting admiration of the Spaniards. If it had
carried an English name on its title page, it would immediately have
aroused hostility among critics and the general public.
Allowing a Spanish author to present this novel as his own work, Bacon
gave this subtly pro-English book the best possible chance of being
read and accepted in Spain without prejudice.
Don Quixote, in fact, should be regarded as an instrument of
reconciliation between Spain and England, two great countries kept
apart by war and the threat of war for five decades. Now was the time
for peace and goodwill, a policy that James I keenly pursued.
At the same time, in England, Don Quixote, read and enjoyed by a large
public in the 17th Century, acted in the same way as a healer of the
wide gulf between the two countries, as there is nothing in the book
that is hostile towards Spain; and nothing is said about Spanish
hatred of the English.
-- Francis Carr
Here is a final clue which will, I think, at least make you think that
perhaps I am right. As in Midsummer Night's Dream, this is a bottom
story.
In the story of Sancho Panza's whipping -- panza is Spanish for belly
-- near the end of the novel, the number 33 is twice put in quite
unnecessarily. As already mentioned, 33 is the number produced by
adding together the five letters of Bacon's name. There are 33 Masonic
degrees and Bacon was the leading thirty-three degree Mason in England
at that time. Quixote believed Sancho's story that the beautiful
Dulcinea de Tobosa had been transformed into a coarse-looking peasant
girl. While Quixote and Panza are staying at the Duke's comfortable
castle, they are tricked into believing that Merlin -- the English
wizard -- proclaimed that the only way that Dulcinea could regain her
former beautiful figure and face was to subject Sancho to a prolonged
beating. The amount of lashes he is to suffer is not a mere fifty or a
hundred, but 3,300 -- 33 hundred. Why this particular number?
He only agrees to this painful humiliation when Quixote promises to
pay him the sum of 825 reals. This would amount, Panza says, to "3,300
pieces of three blankes," the coins that he would be paid for each
stroke.
Once again we have this Baconian signature -- 33.
--------------------------------------------
Who Wrote Don Quixote?
http://www.shakespeareauthorship.org.uk/
What evidence is there that Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote?
There is no manuscript, no letter, no diary, no will, no marked grave,
no record of any payment for Don Quixote, although it became popular
in Spain and abroad during his lifetime. What do we know about Thomas
Shelton,whose translation has won the praise of literary historians
ever since it appeared in England in 1612? What do we know of Cid
Hamet Benengeli, the Arab historian who,we are told by Cervantes, is
the real author?
Until now no proper attempt has been made to place Don Quixote in the
wider context of the great plays of this period of European
literature, the plays of Shakespeare. And no-one has paid enough
attention to the Shelton text, which is seldom read today.
English Characters in Don Quixote
Thomas Cecial "my neighbour" - Sir Thomas Cecil, cousin and friend of
Fracis Bacon
Samson Carrasco - Nicholas Carr and Roger Ascham,Cambridge professors
Queen Madasima & Master Elisabat, her physician - Queen Elizabeth and
Roderigo Lopez, her physician
Cid Hamet Benengeli,"the real author" mentioned 33 times - Lord
Hamlet, son of England
Friston, the Enchanter - Friston, a village in Sussex, where the giant
of Wilmington fought the giant of Firle
Pyramus and Thisbe - Pyramus and Thisbe (Midsummer Nights Dream)
Identical Quotations
Many indications, many clues, are found in the Shelton text itself. I
have found 150 quotations in Don Quixote which appear in the works of
Bacon or Shakespeare - or both. Here are some of them:
All is not gold that glisters
One swallow makes not a summer
He that gives quickly, gives twice
God and St.George!
Might overcomes right
The weakest go to the wall
Comparisons are odious
The naked truth
I was born free
Time out of mind
Through narrow chinks and crannies
Let the world wag
Every pissing while
The golden age
The long word
Why the secrecy?
The sixth rule of the Rosicrucians, as laid down in the Fama
Fraternitatis of 1614,was that members should remain anonymous for one
hundred years. The leading member of the Rosicrucians in England at
this time was Francis Bacon.
No attention has been paid to the date of Don Quixote's publication in
Madrid in 1605, only six years after the fourth Armada of 1599. An
important element in this work, seldom mentioned by critics, is its
surprising lack of animosity towards England. If it had appeared as an
English novel in Spain, everyone would have been understandably
prejudiced against it. It took a long time to win the lasting
admiration of the Spaniards. If it had carried an English name on its
title page, it would have immediately aroused hostility among critics
and the general public. Allowing a Spanish author to present this
novel as his own work, Bacon this gave this subtly pro-English book
the best possible chance of being read and accepted in Spain without
prejudice.
Don Quixote should be regarded as an instrument of reconciliation
between Spain and England, two great countries kept apart by war and
the threat of war for five decades. Distrust and hatred of the
foreigner had caused the deaths of innocent men in both countries. Now
was the time for peace and good-will, a policy that James I keenly
pursued. Indeed the complete absence of anything even remotely
critical of the English in itself establishes Don Quixote as an
important milestone in Anglo-Spanish relations. At the same time in
England, Don Quixote, read and enjoyed by a large public in the
seventeenth century, acted in the same way as a healer of the wide
gulf between the two countries, as there is nothing in the book which
is hostile towards Spain; and nothing is said about Spanish hatred of
the English.
When Don Quixote appeared in Madrid and in London, the great
Shakespeare plays appeared on the London stage. When the English plays
and the Spanish novel are looked at together, a clear picture emerges:
the creation of a pan-European literary master-plan. The greatest,
most famous play about Denmark is Hamlet. The greatest plays about
Italy are Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello, the
Moor of Venice. The greatest play about Rome is Julius Caesar. The
greatest play about Egypt and its absorption into the Roman empire is
Antony and Cleopatra. The greatest plays about England are the
Shakespeare history dramas. All these plays are the work of one man,
and all of them were written under a pen name.
One leading European nation is conspicuous by its absence in this
catalogue of masterpieces. There is no world-famous play about Spain,
which is on the same level of genius as the plays just mentioned: but
there is one great novel about Spain which is just as famous
throughout the world - Don Quixote. Like all the Shakespeare plays,
this appeared under an alias. Bacon, casting his eye over the whole of
Europe, found that this area lacked an appropriate masterpiece, an
epic story to match those of Greece, Rome, Italy, and Great Britain.
In a letter to Lord Burleigh written in 1592 Bacon declared "I have
taken all knowledge to be my province." A play would not have been the
right format for a Spanish epic. Needing a larger canvas he chose to
write a novel.
In the penultimate chapter of DQ Francis Bacon's name is clearly given
in one oddly worded paragraph. The reader's attention is alerted by
the pattern made by the girls' names which are all italicised. This
pattern is only visible in the 1620 edition of the Shelton version of
`DQ. In subseqent edtions these italics have disappeared. In the
Cervantes text,this paragraph stands as a pointless rigmarole of
names. The names in italics in this paragraph are all in italics in
the English text:
The italicised names form a Y pattern. The name Francis appears in the
third line;and the letters b,a,c,n,o can be read vertically on the
right side. The letter Y is a Pythagorian symbol,adopted by the
Rosicrucians, symbolising the broad way of the tyrant and the narrow
way of the adepti, or the inspired.
from WHO WROTE DON QUIXOTE? by FRANCIS CARR
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BOOK REVIEW FRANCIS CARR, WHO WROTE DON QUlXOTE?
http://www.baconsocietyinc.org/baconiana/baconiana2/carr_review.htm
Xlibris Press, 2004, ISBN: 1413448119
Michael Buhagiar www.thegreatpesher.com
The great Sufi author Saadi of Shiraz wrote, with typical deceptive
simplicity: 'I fear that you will not reach Mecca, O Nomad! For the
road which you are following leads to Turkestan!' Francis Carr, who is
surely on the road to Mecca, has produced a thoroughly researched,
impeccably argued, and beautifully written work which, in a world
where objectivity and enthusiasm for the truth ruled research in the
humanities, would cause proponents of Miguel de Cervantes as the sole
or even main author of Don Quixote to reconsider. The stakes are high
here, as high as in the Shakespeare authorship debate; for in a survey
by the Nobel Prize committee of one hundred of the world's foremost
writers, Don Quixote was named as the greatest novel ever written. And
let it never be thought that the identity of the true author is of
academic interest only, affecting not one jot our response to the work
at hand: for it is a portal into the vast store of the Ageless Wisdom
underlying the great works of that era, a philosophical goldmine of
which the modern interpreter remains largely and tragically ignorant.
A trained historian, Francis Carr worked as a private secretary to a
member of Parliament, and edited for seven years the history magazine
Past and Future, after which he became director of Residence Recitals,
presenting monthly readings and music recitals in houses where great
writers and composers once lived. His previous books are European
Erotic Art, Ivan the Terrible, and Mozart and Constanze. He is, that
is to say, a man of accomplishments and class, who may readily be
sorted in this way with others such as Judge Nathaniel Holmes, Mark
Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Sir Edwin Durning-
Lawrence, all of whom promoted Sir Francis Bacon as the true author of
the Shakespeare works, just as Carr argues for his presence behind Don
Quixote. One could prolong this list of luminaries considerably. The
quality that links them all is that of nobility, in its truest sense,
as derived from the Greek gignoskein, 'to know', and related to the
words 'gnomic' and 'gnosis'. Yet, such is the mire into which modern
scholarship has fallen, that to profess a belief in nobility now is
routinely to be accused of snobbery.
Carr has chosen, to use a current metaphor, the 'red ocean' strategy
of engaging with orthodox academe on its own territory, of the
bloodstained sea of scholarly debate, rather than a 'blue ocean'
strategy of arguing in terms of esoteric philosophy, in which the
enemy has little expertise or interest. And yet, perhaps not: for the
hostile navy is in truth a sham, as enfeebled by years of protection
in an artificial harbour, without ever having hazarded the Sea of
Truth. For, since its publication in 2004, Who Wrote Don Quixote? with
its impressive weight of evidence, has met with, not impassioned
rebuttals and lively debate from the Cervantian camp, but a deafening
silence. It is surely just to assert that, had this been a scientific
issue, it would have had a far different reception. For science used
so be called, justifiably, 'natural philosophy', and closely to study
the natural world is inevitably to acquire wisdom and a hunger for the
truth. And philosophy is, despite his/her pretensions to the contrary,
a terra incognita to the average literary academic, as it certainly
was not to the quintessential Renaissance man that was Sir Francis
Bacon.
A brief tour through Who Wrote Don Quixote? will give a sense of the
range and depth of Carr's investigations. The publication dates of the
Spanish Don Quixote and the English ‘translation' by Thomas Shelton,
as well as the complete lack of any anti-English sentiment, in the
immediate aftermath of the humiliating defeats of the Spanish armadas,
are suggestive that the novel was originally an English work, which
was subsequently translated into Spanish. The literary career of
Cervantes himself was, apart from Don Quixote, which shines like gold
in silt, undistinguished in the extreme. There is as little
contemporary documentation of his connection with his supposedly
'major' work as there is in the case of Shakespeare. Almost nothing is
known of Thomas Shelton, and yet his 'translation' has received
ringing endorsements as one of the greatest of all time.
There is much textual evidence to suggest that Cervantes was not the
true author. In the Preface, 'Cervantes' mentions that he is 'Though
in shew a Father, yet in truth but a stepfather to Don Quixote.’ Then
there is the repeated mentioning of an 'Arabicall Historiographer' Cid
Hamete Benengeli—a name unknown in Arabic literature—as its true
author. Cid means 'Lord' in Spanish, while Benengeli most plausibly
means 'son of the English', which is suggestive enough in itself. The
design on the title page of the first edition of 1605 shows a hooded
falcon resting on the gloved hand of a man who is hidden from view.
Around the arm and the bird is the inscription Post tenebras spero
lucem, 'After darkness I hope for light', a phrase from Job which was
adopted as the motto of Calvinism, and later of the entire Protestant
Reformation—an incongruous wording to have on a work issuing from a
supposedly Catholic country.
It is in Introductory sonnets that the first firm evidence appears to
indicate the nature of Don Quixote as a translation from English into
Spanish—the verses in Shelton's version being more strongly written
and readily understood, while in the Spanish they are generally flabby
and at times incomprehensible, so that they indeed read, in fact, like
poor translations. Carr might profitably have pursued the Sufi origins
of the famous Windmill episode; but this topic deserves a book of its
own, and he was surely right to keep his focus. Fascinatingly, this
episode is thick with English references, which Carr has assiduously
discovered, so that the author appears to have been thinking in
writing it of an English rather than Spanish landscape. The many
learned references to English history suggest that the author had a
deep interest in and sympathy for that country; yet there is not the
slightest similar evidence in any of Cervantes' other works.
Here is a fine example, from many, of Carr's rigour. In Shelton's text
he uses a mispronounced word to denote the rustic ignorance of
Grisostome, the scholar turned shepherd who dies of unrequited love
after his spurning by the shepherdess Marcela:
It was reported of him that he was skillfull in Astronomie, and all
that which passed above in heaven, in the Sunne and the Moone; for he
would tell us most punctually the clips of the Sunne and the Moone.
All Cervantes could produce was the following:
They said he knew the science of the stars and that which happens in
the sky, the sun and moon, because punctually he told us the cris of
the sun and moon.
There is no such Spanish word as cris; and the inference that must be
drawn is that the Spanish translator failed to find an equivalent for
'clips', and so substituted a nonsense word. No other conclusion is
possible. In another erotic passage in Shelton there is clear evidence
of bowdlerization in the Spanish. The placement and frequency of the
word 'bacon' suggests that Sir Francis Bacon was making his role
explicit. Carr provides a table of no less than sixty-nine phrases
which are common to Don Quixote, the works of Bacon, and the works of
Shakepseare: a nice example being 'All is not gold that glisters'. In
the novel of The Curious-lmpertinent in Part 1, Camilla's maid Leonela
tells her not to worry about her affair with Lothario, saying he has
many good qualities, 'the whole A.B.C.' There follows in Shelton a
list of adjectives, 'amiable, bountiful, courteous &c' each one
exquisitely chosen for its role. Here then would be a supreme
challenge for the translator—and the only possible conclusion again
would be that Cervantes, or whoever performed the service, notably
failed it.
Carr rightly highlights the Wagon of the Parliament of Death as an
episode of interest. Quixote and Sancho come upon a wagon containing a
fantastic group of personages—Death, a devil, Cupid, an angel, an
emperor, a fool, a knight—who, it emerges, are a company of travelling
players. Carr draws some fascinating parallels with the Shakespeare
plays, which again suggest that they issued from the same atelier; yet
he fails to pinpoint the episode's raison d'etre, which resides in the
company's nature as a spectacular portrayal of cards of the Marseilles
Tarot deck. This opens up a fascinating line of enquiry: for, when we
consider the significant Qabalistic element in Don Quixote, and the
similar importance of the Qabalah-Tarot in the Shakespeare works, then
it becomes clear that the two works— the greatest body of plays in the
Western tradition, and its greatest novel—were products of the
Rosicrucian enlightenment, which was driven pre-eminently by Bacon. Is
there any evidence that Cervantes had Rosicrucian connections? This is
a question which the orthodox camp should answer.
One would have wished for a little more on the esoteric significance
of the talking head of bronze in Part 2, as a reference to the golden
or brazen head as a Sufi symbol of the enlightened man; and also the
placement of this scene within the larger episode of the printing
house: all of which forms a single, unified allegory of the true
nature of Don Quixote as a product of the pen of Sir Francis Bacon,
who was 'talking through the head' of another, just as he did in the
works of Shakespeare.
Carr draws many other notable historical and literary parallels.
Finally, he demonstrates his objectivity by citing the work of James
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, a Cervantian who has taken Shelton to task for
shoddy translations. Carr nicely skewers him, while admitting that one
or two of his points may indeed have some validity. There is a
suggestion here, therefore, that Don Quixote may be yet another
example in the works of Sir Francis Bacon of the Master involving his
front man in the writing of the project, albeit in a low level way. I
have argued this position, following the work of Rev. Walter Begley in
Bacon's Nova Resuscitatio and Is It Shakespeare?, in the case of the
plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. It is difficult to imagine how the
ruse could have been carried off had this not been the case.
The true history of Elizabethan literature is being written, then, not
in the groves of academe, but in the homes and offices of private
scholars. I am sure I can speak for Francis Carr in thanking the
literary establishment for giving us the privilege of doing such
important and satisfying research, which will survive, like Timon's
tomb, long after the cleansing waves of history have shattered their
castles in the sand.
Michael Buhagiar's new book Don Quixote and the Brilliant Name of
Fire: Qabalah, Tarot and Shakespeare in the Greatest Novel will appear
from Xlibris Press in April 2008
----------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Ryan Murtha
I never desired any other thing, than that men would utterly abhor the fabulous impertinent and extravagant bookes of Chivalries: And to say truth, by means of my true Don Quixote, they begin already to stagger; for undoubtedly such fables and flim-flam tales will shortly faile, and I hope shall never rise again. -Don Quixote
Politic and Military Discourses of Francois de la Noue:
The sixt Discourse.
That the reading of the books of Amadis de Gaul, & such like is no less hurtful to youth, than the works of Machiavel to age.
I have heretofore greatly delighted in reading Machiavel’s Discourses & his Prince, because in that same he entreats of high & goodly politic & martial affairs, which many Gentlemen are desirous to learn, as matters meet for their professions. And I must needs confess that so long as I was content slightly to run them over, I was blinded with the gloss of his reasons. But after I did with more ripe judgement thoroughly examine them, I found under that fair show many hidden errors, leading those that walk in them into the paths of dishonour and damage. But if any man doubt of my sayings, I would wish him to read a book entitled Antimachiauellus, the author whereof I know not, and there shall he see that I am not altogether deceived. Neither do I think greatly to deceive myself though I also affirm the books of Amadis to be very fit instruments for the corruption of manners, which I am determined to prove in few words, to the end to dissuade innocent youth from entangling themselves in these invisible snares which are so subtly laid for them. Evermore have there bene some men given to the writing & publishing of vanity, whereto they have been the sooner led, because they knew their labours would be acceptable to those of their time, the greatest sort whereof have swallowed up vanity as the fish doth water. The ancient fables whose relics do yet remain, namely, Lancelot of the lake, Pierceforest, Tristran, Giron the courteous, & such others do bear witness of this old vanity. Herewith were men fed for the space of 500 years, until our language growing more polished and our minds more ticklish, they were driven to invent some novelties, wherewith to delight us. Thus came the books of Amadis into light among us in this last age. But to say the troth, Spain bred them and France new clothed them in gay garments. In the days of Henry the second did they bear chiefest sway; and I think if any man would then have reproved them, he should have bene spit at, because they were of themselves playfellows and maintainers to a great sort of persons: whereof some after they had learned to Amadize in speech, their teeth watered, so desirous were they even to taste of some small morsels of the delicates therein most lively and naturally represented. And although many disdained and rejected them, yet have but over many, having once tasted of them, made them their continual food. This sustenance hath engendered evil humours that distempered those souls which peradventure at the first thought not to have grown so weak.
My judgement therefore of these books in general, shall be this. I think (unless I be deceived) that he that composed them was some courtly Magician, cunning and sly, who to the end to bring his art into estimation, and withal to procure unto those that be dealers therein, both honour & fear, hath cunningly feigned 1000 marvels which he hath covered and wrapped up in a number of pleasant, desired, and usual matters, so as the one running among the other, the whole might be the better received. I knows there are some that will find my opinion to be very strange, because they ween that the author of the said books’ intent was no other but to leave to the posterity a portraiture of the exercises of the Courts in his time, and withal to forge a spur wherewith to prick forward young Gentlemen, and to incite them to entertain love and practice arms, as the two only most beautiful objects that may delight, fashion, and cause them to climb to honour. But their judgement is too simple, as staying rather upon the consideration of the beauty of certain outward matters, than upon the truth of the inward. For notwithstanding I grant that the instructions and examples of this fabulous history may also be propounded, to the end to teach both to love and fight, yet will I say that the most of those loves are dishonest, and almost all the combats full of falsehood, and not to be practiced, so that the following of those rules is to walk in error. All therefore that I pretend to show may far better appear by deducting the particularities that I have noted.
I will begin with the persons of Alquif, Urgand, and their like, enchanters and witches, there termed Sages, as also the Magical or devilish arts which they used are called Perfect wisdom. Yea I think if the author durst he would have named them Prophets, which name they deserved, but with this tail, of Satan. When these Sorcerers or Witches came to any Princes court, they were cherished and wonderfully honored, yea, they were admired as if they had newly come out of heaven, neither did themselves fail to seek meet occasions for to come, as when they must part two knights fleshed to murder each other to minister pastime to ye Ladies, either to bring enchanted armor to save a young Prince that was to receive the order of knighthood, either to set a whole Court in an uproar by some terrible sight, and then to appease and qualify it again.
But I do amiss in going about to specify their miracles. For we must imagine that Jupiter and Minerva in old time did never so much as these. Moreover, when there was any question of enquiring after things to come, they were straight sought unto, as the Pagans used to go to the Oracle of Apollo. We are not therefore to marvel that they were much made of, since we see them thus endued with a supernatural power. For these kinds of Magicians are accounted good and succorable. But the author forges also others, as Archalaus the Enchanter, Melie, and many more that delighted only in doing mischief. Whereby we may easily perceive that he makes Magic arts matters indifferent, thinking them lawful or unlawful, according as they be used well or ill. Yet, it seems he allow the use thereof among the Christians, and disallows it among Pagans. These doth he say to have drawn their knowledge out of the books of Medea, who in old time was a notable sorceress. But his Urgand the unknown he says, to be instructed by the wonderful precepts of great Apollidon, whom he feigns to have been as another Zoroaster, wherein he speaks better than he is aware. For Apollidon may be the same Apollion mentioned by Saint John in his Revelation, namely, the Devil, whom we may say to have been the common schoolmaster to them all, because that so pernicious arts, replenished with fraud and lying, cannot proceed out of any other shop than his. We must therefore settle ourselves, and beware we be not snared in the writings and persuasions of those that after they have masqued and disguised impiety, would harbor it among us who are to drive it away as a most horrible monster. Most men when they hear speaking of enchantments and sorceries, do at the first scorn or detest them: but if they suffer themselves so far to be led as to delight to talk of them, or to see some of their proofs, they doe by little and little take a custom not to abhor them.
Like unto such as having long eschewed serpents, do nevertheless by seeing & handling them, come at length to wear them about their necks, notwithstanding nature doth somewhat thereat rapine. Some may say that of a fly I make an elephant, also that if that reading of these follies which every one accounts but fables, were so dangerous, our great learned men should likewise abstain from reading the books of Iamblichus, Porphyry, Psellus, Apollonius of Tyana and such like, who have at large entreated upon Magic and the communication that may be had with Demons, as also of what sacrifices they require. Whereto I answer, that there is great difference between those that peradventure never read any other books but Amadis, wherein the sugar that is dispersed all over makes them to swallow great morsels of Aloes at unawares: and the others who grounded in learning, age, and experience, do seek for some roses in the large forests of thorns. For the first not knowing the snares, are suddenly taken, whereas the others perceiving them afar of, do seek to break them. Truly the youth of our courts within these ten years had not been so ready to feed their curiosity with such marvels, had not the said books of vanity prepared them. And this is it that hath caused Astronomers & enchanters to be so well welcome. Many account it no inconvenience to see and learn those things that procure mirth and marvels: but they perceive not that the same is the beginning of that game, and that the poison lieth in the tail. There be other pastimes enough though we meddle not with those wherein the magicians’ cunning varlets come to play the feats of pass & repass: and such as enter familiarity with them, do never escape their payment, not in Ape’s coin (as the proverb terms it) but in much worse, which these petty transfigured maumets (that come to play with the simple) do liberally deliver them: For in the end they catch the souls, infecting them with a foolish belief, which by little and little carries them from God. The prophet Balaam, though a false Prophet, did nevertheless say very well that the people of Israel was blessed because they had among them neither Soothsayer, diviner, nor enchanter. If we will enjoy the like blessing we must also imitate that people, as well in rejecting the persons as the writings, which are as baits to inure us in devilish mysteries. Thus much of the first and principal poison hidden among the fruits of Amadis’ delights.
Concerning the second, which I term the Poison of pleasure, which also is much more open than the other, and withal so subtle and penetrative, that to eschew harm thereby we must first use very good preservatives: it consists in many sorts of dishonest lusts, which therein are so lively described, that young men in the consideration of them are deceived, as the birds were in the sight of Zeuxis’ counterfeit fruits. The French translators have studied well to polish their translations, also have added as I ween (for the true Spanish language is too simple) all the fairest ornaments they were able to borrow of Rhetoric, to the end the new might be of the more efficacy to persuade things whereto many are but too willing to be persuaded: and having made it more copious and wanton, it is not to be demanded whether the sound thereof be pleasant to the ear, through that which being once passed, it tickles the most tender affections of the heart, which it moves more or less according as the persons are disposed thereto. Oh what a goodly instruction is it for ladies, to see young princesses frying in amorous flames, for some knight whom they never saw until within two hours before, for albeit shame and modesty ought to restrain them within the bounds of shamefastness, yet doth the author make them confess, and even at the first that the violent stings of the God Cupid (whom they do blame) have wounded them so deep, as not being able to get out at the door they must creep forth at the window, into some delicate garden to eat Apricots. But this I have noted, that fortune has been to them always so favorable, that never any of them took harm, so that well we may apply unto them this song,
Your pace it is so swift Guillemette, your pace it so swift.
But for the knights they are more quick upon the spur. For so soon as the beam of beauty have dazzled their conceits, they are not only in a continual heat, but also even roasted & rosted (as the good old wives of our towns do say of the souls in purgatory) so that they never stand still, until they have found some remedy to refresh them. Neither do these loves in all these difficulties want some subtle Dariolets, that is to say, cunning bawds. And I believe Homer, in the personages that he hath brought in to describe sundry offices did never make any to play their parts better than can these: who know more inventions than a very for of subtilties, to catch the birds with the snares of pleasure. This comedy thus played, the author employs all his eloquence to shew that man’s felicity consists herein, and it is of no small force to infect delicate youth with the daily reading of these follies, do harbor them in their hearts: I ween that in the monastery of Franciscans at Paris (which is the fruitfullest clapper of Monks between this and Rome) there is none but if he had as often read the discourse of Amadis as the old miracles of the Golden Legend, and the new fables of the conformities of St. Francis, would feel himself pricked to the quick with these dangerous temptations. Much rather then ought such younglings as trot up and down the delights of the world to forbear them.
It may be alleged that most of the love tricks there entreated of, do tend to marriage. I grant it. But before they proceed to public marriages, almost all of them do commit secret follies as it were for a learning, whereof oftentimes proceed such claps as blemish honesty. Howbeit, who so on the other side will note the dalliances of Florisel, Don Rogel, and many other knights that were more eager upon this game, than is a promoter after his prey, shall find goodly lessons to kindle incontinency, which already flames but too much in young breasts. The author not content to teach how to abuse lawful love, and to practice unlawful, hath also feigned fantastical, which nevertheless, says the story, have brought forth their effects. As that of Amadis of Greece and Queen Zahara. For some Magicians perceiving that they glanced each at other, although Amadis was married, yet taking pity of their passions, as also to take away the spot of adultery, did enchant them both in goodly delightful gardens, where forgetting themselves they nevertheless forgot not to beget two pretty babes, named Anaxartes and Alaxstraxeree, and then having unwitched them again, let them go where they list without remembering anything that had passed between them. What else is this but a secret representation of Mahomet’s paradise? Whereof this author thought good to give the Christians of his age some small taste as peradventure somewhat savoring of Mahometism (for then was all Spain full of Saracens) to the end they might accustom themselves to feed both their bodies and minds with carnal thoughts and deeds. I leave it therefore to the judgement of such as are endued with any integrity, whether the reading of such books stuffed with such filthy follies be not dangerous both to young and old: for having once read them, they cannot afterward so cleanse themselves, but still there will remain some spots to stain their conversations.
I once heard a good Gentleman say that they contained a hidden property in the generation of Horns, and I doubt himself had had experience thereof. For he wore two petty horn buds hidden behind his ear, which another of the same occupation had there fastened in full payment of the like some, which not long before he had received of him in pure and true love, and therefore the better to be believed, since he spake as a craftsmaster. Truly my counsel were to banish and send all such books into Sicily, where the men keep continual watch for fear of surprises by night. So should we see whether their vigilance could warrant them that this Productive cause should not fructify among them. Some attorney of Amadis may peradventure make this objection, that divers though they never read those books, can nevertheless do as bad as the rest. I think there be such, but I give them double blame, in that their inclinations are so ready without help to run into mischief.
Now let us proceed to lay open some other bad drugs that are to be found in this shop. And in my opinion this may challenge the third place, which is a miserable custom brought in by this author, who avows that the highest point of knights’ honor consists in cutting one another’s throats for frivolous matters. And of these tragedies he makes a sovereign pastime for Kings, Ladies, Courts, and cities. Oftentimes we see in the lists the father against the son, the brother against the brother, the uncle against the nephew, where when they have hewn one upon another two long hours, they have both through faintness fallen down all tainted in blood. Sometime he feigns they knew not one another, another time that they assailed each other to try themselves. But what gross and villainous ignorance and trials are those which procure the perpetrating of so horrible parricides? It may be answered that they be the instructions of the great Apollyon aforenamed, who being a murderer from the beginning, delights wholly in committing of murder. In old time the Romans took pleasure in forcing men to fight to outrance before them, but these were transgressors that had deserved death. Where contrariwise ours are the sons of Kings, Princes, and Lords that counterfeit swordplays: which can persuade unto youth that read these examples, nothing but that they still must be fighting with one or other, to the end to be esteemed of and feared. And peradventure such impressions have multiplied the quarrels in our France within these thirty years, to such quantity as we now see. Also it may be said and that justly, that such spectacles, through customable beholding the shedding of man’s blood, have made our courts pitiless and cruel. Let therefore those that desire to feed their eyes with blood, imitate the manner of England, where they bring in wild beasts, as bears and bulls to fight with dogs, which pastime is without comparison far more lawful.
This likewise was another custom of the knights of those days, that if anyone had made promise to go about any adventure with one of these pilgrims, who always traveled alone with them: though their sovereign Lord, or their father or mother should command them even with lordlike authority and fatherly power to desist therefrom to the end to serve in some other necessary service, yet if they gave it over, it was a perpetual infamy to them, for they were bound by the order of knighthood to follow their gentlewoman, who sometimes was of a reasonable disposition. These be new laws which upon a bravery tend to blot out of men’s minds the same which nature hath so lively engraven and so highly commended unto them. In this respect therefore are they also to be buried in oblivion.
I know I shall be accused of oversevere censuring, or else of slandering of our chronicler of Amadis: for whose justification it will be said that in many places of his books he greatly extols Christian piety. Whereto I answer, that he cannot well excuse himself touching this point. But by that which he says, it is to be judged that he discourses not thereof but only for a cloak to shroud himself, and that he hath read but little in the Bible. For he propounds a wild and savage religion, that dwells only in deserts and hermitages, which he should have described more civil and domestical. But how should he deal sincerely in divine matters, that handles humane so profanely.
Finally, I will yet set down one point concerning the exercise of arms, which he makes so unlike to common use that it is rather a mockery and abusing of youth in giving them such precepts: for although the wiser sort do account such knightly prowesses and giantlike strength, wherewith the reader is so importuned, to be but fables, yet the more indiscreet, under so sweet a charm of words cannot forbear, but remember some such draughts as are most conformable to their affections, to the end afterward as occasion may serve to try them, thinking thereby to be more active than others. True it is that sometime by the scoffs that they incur, they are reclaimed from these errors. But we are not to permit them to proceed to these experiences, but rather to propound unto them true documents, and to hide from them the false, so to keep them from failing. When a man hath bestowed all his time in reading the books of Amadis, yet will it not all make him a good soldier or warrior. For to attain to be the one or the other, he shall need nothing that therein is contained. I will not otherwise speak of these mighty blows that cleave a man to the waist, or cut asunder a Vantbrasse arm and all: neither of those shocks or falls that do a man no harm, but that he may rise and leap again upon his horse’s back, as he were become a leopard, neither of their continual combats of two hours long, together with their foolish enterparliest neither of their imaginary valiancies that make one man to kill two hundred, because the matter itself shows it to tend only to terrify women and children: yea, whosoever will lose so much time as to read the whole story, may plainly see whether I do justly or wrongfully reprove all these brave and magnificent follies. Howbeit among all that I have here said, I do not comprehend those exercises in arms which are the pastimes of our nobility in time of peace, but contrariwise I do commend them, in that they are besides the pleasure both honest and necessary. And everyone that list to call to mind how during the reign of good king Henry II, through the frequenting of the same, they grew more expert and valorous, will endeavor to renew the practice thereof. Here might I allege many other vanities wherewith these books are stuffed, were it not that I fear to bring myself too far in liking with them, whiles I seek to bring others out of taste thereof. Those which I have here traced may suffice to turn away their minds, that are any whit affected to honest and virtuous matters, from spending their time in the same. For they pollute themselves, weening to reap delight, and through loitering in reading of lies, do disdain those wherein the truth doth most evidently shine forth.