secret report sent back from the Virginia colony to the London Virginia Company, has. 'rare' matches that add to the evidence that Virginia Company documents ...
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Francis Bacon’s contribution to three Shakespeare plays Barry R. Clarke
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Preface The aim of this work is to investigate the possibility that Francis Bacon was a contributor in the writing of three Shakespeare plays: The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Tempest. In order to proceed, a new Rare Collocation Profiling (RCP) method is developed using Chadwyck–Healey’s Early English Books Online (EEBO) database to identify those collocations in a target text that are rare. This list is then used to suggest the probable sources of a target and the writers who possibly borrowed from it. In this way, a DNA-type profile is obtained in relation to the target text for all frequently occurring writers that are returned by the searches. However, while collocation analysis is traditionally confined to a database of known dramatists, the search is widened to include all fully searchable texts in EEBO. The test case is the long poem A Funeral Elegye (1612), and my method supports Brian Vickers’ conclusion that John Ford is a better authorial candidate than William Shakespeare. Two previously unattributed pamphlets are also analysed: the Gesta Grayorum (1688), an account of the 1594–5 Gray’s Inn revels; and the True Declaration (1610), a Virginia Company propaganda pamphlet, and the method suggests that Francis Bacon is the only candidate for having compiled the former and that he was a major contributor to the latter. Two of the Shakespeare plays, The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost have previously been associated with the 1594–5 Gray’s Inn revels. The three volumes of Nelson and Elliott’s Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court (NE) are analysed to find that the number of professional companies that played at the Inns of Court (one of which is Gray’s Inn) before 1606 has been overestimated. A document shows that Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, were playing at Greenwich on 28 December 1594 when, as the Gesta Grayorum reports, The Comedy of Errors was performed at Gray’s Inn, and the circumstances do not allow Shakespeare to have been present. The evidence suggests that the play was first enacted by Inns of Court players rather than the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Inns of Court plays were often based on translations of classical works and usually commented on the succession question. It is argued that The Comedy of Errors displays both of these characteristics and so was likely written with the revels in mind. Also, due to certain rare parallels between Francis Bacon’s speeches at the revels and Love’s Labour’s Lost, the play seems to have been intended for performance there but was cancelled. Referring to the results of RCP, I suggest that Francis Bacon not only compiled the Gesta Grayorum but also contributed to the writing of these
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two plays. It is shown that my new method also identifies two non-members of the Inns of Court, Thomas Heywood and Thomas Dekker, as possible later revisers of these plays. In the final chapters, the dating evidence for The Tempest is improved by showing that Caliban’s speech on edible items relies on knowledge of the Bermudan cahow, a bird whose behaviour was unknown in England before September 1610. The application of RCP to The Tempest confirms that William Strachey’s ‘True Reportory’, a 20,000-word secret report sent back from the Virginia colony to the London Virginia Company, has ‘rare’ matches that add to the evidence that Virginia Company documents served as sources for the play. RCP also reveals Francis Bacon as a contributor to the writing of the play. The new method is also applied to the Virginia Company’s True Declaration, a pamphlet that almost certainly relied on ‘True Reportory’, and reveals Bacon as a contributor. This means that he must have inspected Strachey’s ‘True Reportory’, a source for The Tempest. Strong reasons are given why Shakespeare would have been prohibited from gaining access to Strachey’s restricted company report. Finally, I suggest that The Tempest was used as a political tool to promote England’s influence in the New World, and although Strachey’s ‘True Reportory’ could not have been released for inspection, the Virginia Company must have cooperated in supplying information for the writing of the play.
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Acknowledgements Without the late Nigel Cockburn’s work it is fairly certain that I would not have set out on this path, and an estimate of my debt to him is beyond my capability. There are many I would like to thank for assisting in the completion of this work. At Brunel University, I am grateful to my supervisors: Professor William Leahy for his accurate navigation through a complex landscape; and Dr Sean Gaston for his perceptive comments on the manuscript. Dr Emma Jolly has also been kind enough to provide information and encouragement. I appreciate the information on the Virginia Company provided by Professor Alden Vaughan and Tom Reedy, and the valuable feedback on attribution methods given by Professor David Crystal. I am also grateful to Professor Andrew Gurr for reading the entire manuscript and for his useful comments about Inns of Court productions. Conference with friends has undoubtedly clarified my thoughts, and in this regard I would especially like to thank Norman Denton, Janus Oggsford, and Roger Procter. I am also grateful to Dr John Killingbeck, Richard Lea, Fiona Pocock, Mark Rylance, Graham Wiltshire, and Nicholas Young who have all expressed their support for the project at various stages. I am grateful to The Francis Bacon Society for their generous contribution to the funding of this research.
Permissions Figure 5.2, © The British Library Board, Lansdowne MS 107, f.13; Figure 5.3, © Houghton Library, Harvard University, STC: 1664, sig. B; Figure 5.4, © The British Library Board, STC: 17625, sig. A3.
Finally, this work is dedicated to Tigger my cat whose loss is still felt …
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Contents Chapter 1: Aims and Scope Chapter 2: Players at the Inns of Court 2.1 Preliminary 2.2 History of the Inns 2.3 Drama at the Inns 2.4 Visiting players 2.5 Inns of Court players Chapter 3: Productions at the Inns of Court 3.1 Preliminary 3.2 Translations 3.3 The succession plays Chapter 4: A new Rare Collocation Profile (RCP) method 4.1 Preliminary 4.2 A survey of methods 4.2.1 Need for a textual analysis 4.2.2 Computational stylistics 4.2.3 Corpus linguistics 4.2.4 The new method 4.3 A test case: A Funerall Elegye (1612) 4.3.1 The methodology 4.3.2 The test Chapter 5: The 1594–5 Gray’s Inn revels 5.1 Preliminary 5.2 The revels schedule 5.3 Application of the RCP method to Gesta Grayorum 5.4 The players at the revels 5.5 Francis Bacon and drama Chapter 6: The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost 6.1 Preliminary 6.2 The Comedy of Errors 6.3 Application of the RCP method to The Comedy of Errors 6.4 Love’s Labour’s Lost 6.5 Application of the RCP method to Love’s Labour’s Lost 6.6 Love’s Labour’s Lost and the revels Chapter 7: The Tempest 7.1 Preliminary 7.2 Application of the RCP method to The Tempest 7.3 Dating evidence for The Tempest 7.3.1 The Bermuda shipwreck 7.3.2 Caliban 7.3.3 Stephano Janiculo 7.4 The ‘True Reportory’ and The Tempest
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7.5 Secrecy of letters 7.6 Attitude to players Chapter 8: Francis Bacon and the Virginia Company 8.1 Preliminary 8.2 The Virginia pamphlets 8.3 Francis Bacon, Dudley Digges, and Edwin Sandys 8.4 ‘True Reportory’ and True Declaration 8.5 The main contributor to the True Declaration 8.5.1 Topics of interest 8.5.2 Rhetorical figures 8.5.3 Application of the RCP method to True Declaration 8.6 The Tempest as a political tool Chapter 9: Conclusions Appendix A: Calculations for Table 4.1 Appendix B: Thoughts on the RCP method Bibliography
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Abbreviations CAL GEN GES GRA INN LIN LL
NE OFB PHI SEH
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Charles Henry Hopwood, ed., A Calendar of the Middle Temple Records (London: 1903). Alexander Brown, Genesis of the United States, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: 1890). Gesta Grayorum: or the History of the High and mighty Prince, Henry (London: Printed for W. Canning, 1688), Wing: C444. Reginald J. Fletcher, ed., The Pension Book of Gray’s Inn 1569–1669 (London: 1901). F. A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, Vol. 1 (London: 1896). Douglas Walker, ed., The Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn, Vol. I (1897). James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, eds, The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, 7 vols (London: Longmans, 1861–74). Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott Jr, eds, Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court, 3 vols (D. S. Brewer, 2010). The Oxford Francis Bacon, eds. Graham Rees and Lisa Jardine, 15 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996–)1 James Spedding, ed., The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, 5 vols (London: Longman & Co., 1861). James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, eds, The Works of Francis Bacon, 7 vols (London: Longmans, 1857–59).
The Oxford Francis Bacon consists of the following: Vol I: Early Writings to 1596; Vol II: Writings, 1597–1602; Vol III: Writings, 1603–1613; Vol IV: The Advancement of Learning; Vol V: Early Philosophical Writings; Vol VI: Philosophy, 1611–1619; Vol VII: Political and Legal Writings; Vol VIII: King Henry the Seventh; Vol IX: De augmentis scientiarum, I–IV; Vol X: De augmentis scientiarum, V–IX; Vol XI: Novum organon and c.; Vol XII: Hist. naturalis; Hist Vitae; Vol XIII: Last Writings; Vol XIV: Sylva Slvarum; New Atlantis; Vol XV: Essayes and Counsels. To May 2013, only volumes I, VI, VIII, XI, XII, XIII, and XV have been published.
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Key to RCP data tables {vent near.10 war}
Documents will only be returned if they contain ‘vent’ and ‘war’ (including spelling variations) 10 or less words apart.
{throne fby.3 crown}
Documents will only be returned if they contain ‘throne’ and ‘crown’ (including spelling variations) where the latter is 3 words or less after the former.
(3
