Like Cecil, Richard is able, shrewd, masterful, unscrupulous, ambitious; determined, rightly or wrongly, to rule the kingdom. Like Cecil, he can crawl and cringe and dissemble, when it is necessary, and rule with a rod of iron when he possesses the power Here we have a portrait of Cecil.

Was the expression of that face in Bacon's mind when he wrote those lines, which I have just quoted?

Man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

... like an angry ape,

The expression of Cecil's countenance is, to my mind, actually ape-like.

The man who has about him any personal deformity never ceases to be conscious of it. Byron could not forget his club-foot. What a terrible revenge it was when Bacon, under the disguise of the irresponsible play-actor, Shakspere, set on the boards of the Curtain Theater the all-powerful courtier and minister, Sir Robert Cecil, in the character of that other hump-back, the bloody and loathsome Duke of Gloster? How the adherents of Essex must have whispered it among the multitude, as the crippled Duke, with his hump upon his

shoulder, came upon the stage-"That's Cecil!" And how they
must have applied Richard's words of self-description to another?
I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them -
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain,

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

And these last lines express the very thought with which Bacon opens his essay On Deformity.

Deformed persons are commonly even with nature; for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature, being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) “void of natural affection;" and so they have their revenge of nature.

And we seem to see the finger of Bacon pointing towards his cousin, in these words:

Whoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore all deformed persons are extreme bold, first, as in their own defense, as being exposed to scorn, but in process of time by a general habit. Also it stirreth in them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the weaknesses of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. Again, in their superiors it quencheth jealousy towards them, as persons that they think they may at pleasure despise; and it layeth their competitors and emulators asleep, as never believing they should be in possibility of advancement till they see them in possession, so that upon the matter, in a great wit, deformity is an advantage to rising.

Speaking of the death of Cecil, Hepworth Dixon says:

And when Cecil passes to his rest, a new edition of the Essays, under cover of a treatise on Deformity, paints in true and bold lines, but without one harsh touch, the genius of the man. . . . Every one knows the portrait; yet no one can pronounce this picture of a small, shrewd man of the world, a clerk in soul, without a spark of fire, a dart of generosity in his nature, unfair or even unkind.1

One can conceive how bitterly the dissembling, self-controlled Cecil must have writhed under the knowledge that the Essex party, in the Essex theater, occupied by the Essex company of actors, and filled daily with the adherents of Essex, had placed him on the

1 Personal History of Lord Bacon, pp. 193, 204.

boards, with all his deformity upon his back, and made him the object of the ribald laughter of the swarming multitude, "the scum London. As we will find hereafter Queen Elizabeth saying, "Know ye not I am Richard the Second?" so we may conceive Cecil saying to the Queen: "Know ye not that I am Richard the Third?" And if he knew, or shrewdly suspected, that his cousin, Francis Bacon, was the real author of the Plays, and the man who had so terribly mocked his physical defects, we can understand why he used all his powers, as long as he lived, to hold him down; and, as Church suspects, even blackened him in the King's esteem, so that his revenge might transcend the limits of his own frail life. And we can understand the exultation of Bacon when, at last, death loosened from his throat the fangs of his powerful and unforgiving adversary.

In conclusion and recapitulation I would say that I find the political identities between Bacon and the writer of the Plays to be as follows:

Both were aristocrats.

Both despised the mob.

Both contemned tradesmen.

Both loved liberty.

Both loved feudalism.

Both pitied the miseries of the people.

Both desired the welfare of the people.

Both foresaw and dreaded an uprising of the lower classes.

Both belonged to the military party.

Both hated Lord Cobham.

Both were adherents of Essex.

Both tried to popularize Essex.

Both were friends of Southampton.

Both hated Coke.

Both, although Protestant, had some strong antipathy against Queen Elizabeth.

Both refused to eulogize her character after death.

Both, though aristocratic were out of power and bitter against

those in authority.

Both hated Robert Cecil.

Surely, surely, we are getting the two heads under one hat

and that the hat of the great philosopher of Verulam.

THE

CHAPTER V.

the religION OF THE PLAYS.

I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not.
As You Like It, v, 4.

`HE religious world of Elizabeth was divided into two great and antagonistic sects: Catholics and Protestants; and the latter were, in turn, separated into the followers of the state religion and various forms of dissent.

Religion in that day was an earnest, palpable reality: society was set against itself in hostile classes; politics, place, government, legislation - all hinged upon religion. In this age of doubt and indifference, we can hardly realize the feelings of a people to whom the next world was as real as this world, and who were ready to die agonizing deaths, in the flames of Smithfield, for their convictions upon questions of theology.

We are told that William Shakspere of Stratford died a Catholic. We have this upon the authority of Rev. Mr. Davies, who says, writing after 1688,"he died a Papist." Upon the question of the politics of a great man, the leader of either one of the political parties of his neighborhood is likely to be well informed; it is in the line of his interests and thoughts. Upon the question of the religion of the one great man of Stratford, we may trust the testimony of the clergyman of the parish. He could hardly be mistaken. There can be little doubt that William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon died a Catholic. But of what religion was the man who wrote the Plays? This question has provoked very considerable discussion. He has been claimed alike by Protestants and Catholics.

To my

mind it is very clear that the writer of the Plays was a Protestant. And this is the view of Dowden. He says:

Shakespeare has been proved to belong to each communion to the satisfaction of contending theological zealots. . . . But, tolerant as his spirit is, it is certain that the spirit of Protestantism animates and breathes through his writings.'

What are the proofs ?

1 Dowden, Shak. Mind and Art, p. 33.

I. HE IS OPPOSED TO THE PAPAL SUPREMACY.

The play of King John turns largely upon the question of patriotic resistance to the temporal power of the Pope; and this is not a necessary incident of the events of the time, for the poet, to point his moral, antedates the great quarrel between John and the Pope by six years.

He represents King John, upon Ascension Day, yielding up his crown to Pandulph, the Pope's legate, and receiving it back, with these words:

Take again

From this, my hand, as holding of the Pope,

Your sovereign greatness and authority.1

In scene 3 of act iii, he makes Pandulph demand of the King why he keeps Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, out of his see; and King John replies:

What earthly name to interrogatories

Can task the free breath of a sacred king?
Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name

So slight, unworthy and ridiculous,

To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.

Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England

Add this much more: That no Italian priest

Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;

But as we under heaven are supreme head,

So under him, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold,
Without the assistance of a mortal hand:
So tell the Pope; all reverence set apart,
To him and his usurped authority.

King Philip. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.

King John. Though you, and all the kings of Christendom,

Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,

Dreading the curse that money may buy out;
And, by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,
Who, in that sale, sells pardon from himself;
Though you, and all the rest, so grossly led,
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish;

Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose,

Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes.

It is scarcely to be believed that a Catholic could have written these lines.

King John, v, I.