Part 18 (2/2)

I use no trade, no venture; I wound no earth with ploughshares, fat no beasts To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron, Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder: ... expose no s.h.i.+ps To threatenings of the furrow-faced sea; I turn no monies in the public bank, Nor usure private.

Mosca, in order to flatter his master, continues the speech of the latter in the same strain:--

... No, sir, nor devour Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch Will pills of b.u.t.ter, and ne'er purge for it; [10]

Tear forth the fathers of poor families Out of their beds, and coffin them alive In some kind clasping prison, where their bones May be forthcoming, when the flesh is rotten: But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses; You lothe the widow's or the orphan's tears Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries Ring in the roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.

We have here an allusion to Hamlet, [11] where he asks the Ghost why the sepulchre has opened its 'ponderous and marble jaws' to cast him up again; also to the Queen and whilom widow; and, furthermore, to the orphans, Ophelia and Laertes, and to the tears shed by the latter at his sister's death. The cry of vengeance refers to the similar utterances of the Ghost, of Hamlet, and of Laertes, who all seek revenge.

Mosca, with a view of preparing for his master a pleasure more suitable to his taste than that which a play like 'Hamlet,' we suppose, could afford him, brings in the three gamesters:--Nano, a dwarf; Castrone, a eunuch; and Androgyne, a hermaphrodite. [12] The latter is meant to represent Shakspere; for he is introduced by Nano as a soul coming from Apollo, which migrated through Euphorbus and Pythagoras (Meres uses these two names in his eulogy of the soul of Shakspere). [13]

After having recounted several other stages in the migration of Androgyne's soul (we shall mention them further on), the latter has to give an answer why he has 's.h.i.+fted his coat in these days of reformation,'

and why his 'dogmatical silence' has left him. He replies that an obstreperous 'Sir Lawyer' had induced him to do so. From this it may be concluded that Bacon had some influence on Shakspere's 'Hamlet.'

Are not, in poetical manner, the same principles advocated in 'Hamlet,'

which Bacon promoted in science? [14]

After the Hermaphrodite has admitted that he has become 'a good dull mule,' [15] he avows that he is now a very strange beast, an a.s.s, an actor,a hermaphrodite, and a fool; and that he more especially relishes this latter condition of his, for in all other forms, as Jonson makes him confess, he has 'proved most distressed.' [16]

Let us now quote from this Interlude some highly-spiced satirical pa.s.sages.

Nano, the dwarf, coming in with Androgyno and Castrone, asks for room for the new gamesters or players, and says to the public:--

They do bring you neither play, nor university show; And therefore do intreat you that whatsoever they rehea.r.s.e, May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse. [17]

If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pa.s.s, For know, here [18] is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras, [19]

That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow; Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo.

It is explained how that soul afterwards transmigrated into 'the goldy-locked Euphorbus who was killed, in good fas.h.i.+on, at the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta;' how it then pa.s.sed into Hermotimus, 'where no sooner it was missing, but with one Pyrrhus of Delos [20] it learned to go a-fis.h.i.+ng;' [21] how thence it did enter the Sophist of Greece, Pythagoras. After having been changed into whom,

she became a philosopher, Crates the cynick, as itself doth relate it: [22]

Since kings, knights and beggars, knaves, lords, and fools get it, Besides ox and a.s.s, camel, mule, goat, and brock, [23]

In all which it has spoke, as in the cobbler's c.o.c.k. [24]

Nano's present intention, however, is not to refer to such things:--

But I come not here to discourse of that matter, Or his one, two, or three, or his great oath, BY QUATER, [25]

His musics,[26] his trigon, his golden thigh, [27]

Or his telling how elements [28] s.h.i.+ft: but I Would ask, how of late thou hast suffered translation And s.h.i.+fted thy coat in these days of Reformation.

_Androgyno_. Like one of the reformed, a fool, as you see, COUNTING ALL OLD DOCTRINE HERESIE.

_Nano_. But not on thine own forbid meats hast thou ventured.

_Androgyno_. On fish, when first a Carthusian I entered.[29]

_Nano_. Why, then thy dogmatical silence hath left thee?

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