IoT System Testing An IoT Journey from Devices to Analytics and the Edge 1st Edition Jon Duncan Hagar instant download
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IoT System Testing
Jon Duncan Hagar
vii
viii Contents
8
Planning for the IoT Tester on Environments and Testing Details����������������������������������� 115
Assuring the Test Environment��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 115
Selecting the Right Test Environment������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 116
Planning for Automation in IoT Tool Environments ������������������������������������������������������� 117
Data Analytics with Tools������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 118
IoT Detailed Project Test Planning (After the Master Test Plans)��������������������������������������� 119
Hardware Planning a Tester Should Know����������������������������������������������������������������������� 119
Detailed Software Testing������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 120
System Test Plan Patterns a Tester Should Know������������������������������������������������������������� 120
Planning Individual Tests (What All Testers Should Do Daily)��������������������������������������� 121
Test Planning from Operations to the End Product Life������������������������������������������������������� 122
Test Operations (Ops) Impacts on Test Planning������������������������������������������������������������� 123
How Does Ops and Test Planning Change Over Time?��������������������������������������������������� 123
System Maintenance, Security, and Retirement��������������������������������������������������������������� 124
Ops Maintenance in Test Planning����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 125
Planning Retirement and Disposal of an IoT System������������������������������������������������������� 125
Testing Integration Factors����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 127
Planning Test IoT Operations and Maintenance (O&M) with Data Analytics
and the Edge��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 128
Test Planning for Release Deployment����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 130
Factory Production: A Very Brief Introduction to Testing IoT Hardware ����������������������� 131
Risk and Opportunity Management on an IoT Test Project��������������������������������������������� 133
Last but Not Least, Test Documentation��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 134
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 135
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 136
9
System Engineering Concepts in IoT Test Planning��������������������������������������������������������� 137
Reviewing Basic Software Engineering (SE) Concepts������������������������������������������������������� 137
Critical Test Enabling Engineering Support Processes��������������������������������������������������������� 139
SQA/QA��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 139
SCM and Testing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 139
System Architecture and Design – Test Top-Level Support��������������������������������������������� 143
System Planning Trade Study – Decision Analysis ��������������������������������������������������������� 144
Designing with Safety for IoT ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 145
Hardware Design Considerations����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 146
Software Design Considerations������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 146
IoT System Integration��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 147
Agile and DevOps Development Impacts����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 149
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 149
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 150
Figure Reference��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 150
Part 3 IoT Test Designs and Security Assessments����������������������������������������������������������������� 151
10 IoT
Test Design: Frameworks, Techniques, Attacks, Patterns, and Tours ��������������������� 153
Test and Heuristics��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 155
Test Patterns ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 156
Example 1: Planning Pattern for IoT [8, 9]��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 156
Example 2: Mind Maps – Test Patterning Tool for Process Selection for IoT��������������������� 157
Example 3: Attacks for IoT – High-Level Test Design Pattern ������������������������������������������� 159
Example 4: Test Meta-design Pattern – Tours for IoT ��������������������������������������������������������� 161
Applying the Specific Tours to Project Factors����������������������������������������������������������������� 162
Contents xi
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 206
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 207
14 Security
OWASP IoT Information Pointer and Logging Events������������������������������������� 209
Intro to OWASP Top Ten Threats (As of 2022) ������������������������������������������������������������������� 209
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 215
15 Internal
Security Team Penetration Test Process�������������������������������������������������������������� 217
Pen Test Process: A Beginning��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 217
Why Perform Pen Test? ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 217
Pen Security Attack and Risk-Based Test Planning for Systems����������������������������������������� 218
Full-Scale Penetration of the System����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 220
Simplified Process to Perform a Pen Test����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 220
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 222
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 222
16 IoT Test Environment Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 223
Test Lab Lifecycle����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 223
Test Lab Refresher ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 224
IoT Lab/SIL Planning and Requirements����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 225
Preferred Test Environment with Full Integration of a Complex IoT System ��������������������� 226
The Field Test Environment, Analytics, and SIL Working Together ����������������������������������� 228
Deep Dive on Test Environment Cost and Schedule Introduction��������������������������������������� 229
Test Tool Introduction for IoT����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 230
Test Hardware Setup for SIL-Chaos Engineering Support with ZIF Connectors����������������� 232
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 233
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 233
Figure References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 233
Part 4 IoT Architectures, Environments, and Integrated Independent Testing������������� 235
17 Architectures
Critical to Project Success��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 237
Cyber-Physical Systems������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 237
Environments and Architectures for IoT������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 239
Architecture Definition of Terms for This Book������������������������������������������������������������������� 240
Historical Reference: Architecture in Engineering and Literature��������������������������������������� 240
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 242
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 242
18 Overview
of IoT Software Architectures: Products and Testing Support����������������������� 243
A Quick Look at IoT Architectures ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 244
Overview of IoT Support Architectures������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 246
Mind Maps of IoT Environments����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 247
IoT Software Test Architecture (STA) Introduction������������������������������������������������������������� 249
IoT Software Test Architecture (STA) Details��������������������������������������������������������������������� 252
Major Element: Test Plan (a.k.a. STAp)��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 252
Major Element: System/Software Under Test (SUT)������������������������������������������������������� 252
Major Element: Test Environment (STAe)����������������������������������������������������������������������� 253
Major Element: Test Model (STAm) ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 254
Major Architecture Element: Views, Viewpoints, and Containers (STAv)����������������������� 254
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 258
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 258
Contents xiii
19
IoT STA System: Software Integration Lab (SIL) Environments����������������������������������� 259
Environment: Development Team Testing and Integration Support������������������������������������� 260
Environment: Hardware Team Testing and Integration ������������������������������������������������������� 261
Environment: Full Hardware-Software-System Integration������������������������������������������������� 263
A Simple Integration STA SIL����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 263
A More Advanced IoT STA SIL with Rapid Integration Reconfiguration����������������������� 264
Test Environment Supports: Simulation, Modeling, and Emulation ����������������������������������� 266
Full System IoT STA SIL with Simulation and Modeling����������������������������������������������� 270
Environment: Real-World Full System Software Test ��������������������������������������������������������� 272
Special Environment: Security Test Sandbox����������������������������������������������������������������������� 274
IoT Chaos Engineering “Live” in the Real World ����������������������������������������������������������� 276
Level of SIL Environment vs. Project Factors����������������������������������������������������������������� 276
Bringing STA to a Large-Scale Software Test Architecture/Environment����������������������� 277
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 279
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 279
Figure References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 279
20
Tools for the Software System Integration Lab (SIL)������������������������������������������������������� 281
Test Lab Needs��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 281
Modeling and Requirements Management Tools����������������������������������������������������������������� 282
Automate, Automate, Automate������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 282
Simulation Test Tools Needed to Support IoT ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 283
Evolve into Automation Tooling for IoT Success������������������������������������������������������������� 283
Evolve IoT Testing with AI Tools������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 284
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 284
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 285
21
Environments for Independent Testing and IV&V on Large IoT Systems��������������������� 287
Getting the Most Out of Independent Testing and IV&V����������������������������������������������������� 287
Verification����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 288
Validation ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 289
N-Version Testing Supporting Independence and IV&V����������������������������������������������������� 289
Lessons Learned in Testing, in Independence, and IV&V��������������������������������������������������� 290
Tooling Example for Testing Large IoT Systems and IV&V����������������������������������������������� 292
When to Consider IoT Test Independence and IV&V Environments����������������������������������� 293
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 293
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 293
22
Self-Organizing Data Analytics (SODA): IoT Data Analytics, AI, and Statistics����������� 295
SODA Model Examined������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 295
Defining SODA��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 296
SODA Implementation Options Using Stats, Taxonomies, and AI ������������������������������������� 297
Use Case Example for SODA and Edge Data Flow������������������������������������������������������������� 302
Leveraging SODA for IoT Testing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 303
AI SODA – A Near Future for IoT/Edge/Cloud Data Analytics ����������������������������������������� 304
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 305
References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 305
xiv Contents
A IoT Supporting Interface, Hardware, Platform, and Protocol Standards ��������������������� 307
B Careers in IoT Testing ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 309
C IoT Testing Startup Checklist ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 311
Getting Started with IoT Testing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 311
Usability Testing����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 311
Compatibility and Integration Testing ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 312
App Localization Issue����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 312
External Connectivity Issues��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 312
Interrupt Testing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 313
Operational Testing����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 313
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which would have to be cured before the apparatus would work. The truth is
that in the philosophical work published or privately circulated by Bacon
before 1610, though there was much to appeal to the æsthetic side of the
human mind, much to stimulate the cultivated layman’s admiration for
knowledge, for the devoted student of science there was very little help of a
constructive kind, the only kind of help he really needed.13
The Sapientia Veterum, 1609, is based on a number of myths selected
from the poets and fabulists of antiquity in virtue of a certain congruity with
Bacon’s intuitions and predilections. The Sylva Sylvarum or Natural
History, his latest work, is based on an assemblage of what by way of
distinction might be called facts. The dissonance between the two works is
amazing. The Sapientia, which was intended to bespeak a favourable
hearing for the New Art, busies itself with venerable fictions. From the
Natural History on the other hand, poetry and fable were to have been
rigorously excluded. Bacon’s biographer, Rawley, wrote for the first edition
of the work (1627), an address “To the Reader,” which winds up: “I will
conclude with an usual speech of his lordship’s; that this work of his
Natural History is the world as God made it, and not as man made it; for it
hath nothing of imagination.”
Several years before the Sylva was written, Galileo had censured as
paper philosophers certain contemporaries of his, who set about the
investigation of nature as if she were a “book like the Æneid or the
Odyssey.” One at least of Bacon’s intimate friends, Sir Tobie Mathew, was
no stranger to Padua and Florence, and it is quite possible that he may have
informed Bacon of these strictures of Galileo’s not long after they were
uttered. But, be this as it may, a momentous change must have taken place
after 1609, not in Bacon’s aspiration to be the greatest of human benefactors
to man, but in his conception of the means by which his vast expectations
were to be realised. Had the change been less than “fundamental,” “a good
and well ordered Natural History” would not have been described in the
Phenomena Universi (1622), as holding the “keys both of sciences and of
operations.” After 1612 Bacon became for some eight or nine years so
immersed in affairs, as Attorney-General, Privy Councillor—no sinecure
then—Lord Chancellor, etc., that it must have been impossible for him to
give to his New Logic a tithe of the attention it required. “At this period,”
says Dr. Abbott: “there is a great gap in the series of Bacon’s philosophical
works. In 1613 he was appointed Attorney-General, and from that time till
1620 no literary work of any kind published or unpublished is known to
have issued from his pen. All that he did was apparently to rewrite
repeatedly and revise the Novum Organum.14 The Organum made its
appearance in 1620 with a dedication to the King by no means confident of
either the worth or the use of his offering. But as he says in the proemium
that “all other ambition whatsoever was in his opinion lower than the work
in hand,” one would infer that his zeal for philosophy had begun to revive
even before the tragedy of 1621. The remaining five years of the great
man’s life—“a long cleansing week of five years’ expiation and more,” he
calls it—were more or less distracted with anxieties in no way connected
with philosophy. He hoped, nevertheless, to present the old King with a
“good history of England, and a better digest” of the laws, and the young
King with a history of the “time and reign of King Henry the Eighth.”15 But
after the most distressful sequelæ of his fall had been relieved, his
grandiose, imposing scheme for the renovation or transfiguration of
philosophy must have regained the position it had held some ten or a dozen
years earlier. Without it, life for him would have been a mean and
melancholy failure. “God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass
capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the
impression thereof ... and not delighted in beholding the variety of things
and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out the ordinances which
throughout all those changes are infallibly observed.”16 This capacity, this
wonder-working exaltation of the mind had been neglected, and all but lost,
by reason of the interference of Aristotle and other insolent dictators, and
Bacon imagined himself destined to rehabilitate it, to usher in a new era, to
endow the human race, not with knowledge alone, but with legions of
beneficent arts,17 and for reward to go down to the ages as pre-eminently
the Friend of man.18 Compared with a vision so magnificent, his youthful
dream of a poet’s immortality would seem paltry, stale, and unprofitable.
No wonder the old love, poetry, was forsaken. The wonder would have been
if for the sake of the old love he had done or permitted or countenanced
anything which he thought might possibly prejudice posterity against the
new love, his “darling philosophy.”19
The more vulnerable points of this tentative theory20 of Bacon’s relation
to poetry seem to be three. First, Bacon’s final perseverence in ignoring his
hypothetical offspring. Second, his Translation of certain Psalms into
English Verse which, according to Dr. Abbott, “so clearly betrays the
cramping influence of rhyme and verse, that it could hardly have been the
work of a true poet even of a low order.” Third, the detailed treatment of
poetry in the Advancement of Learning is essentially and flagrantly
defective. Objection number one—Bacon’s persistent neglect of the plays—
is easily answered.21 The reasons for continuing to ignore them may in the
aggregate have been even more cogent at the close, than at the opening of
his career. For a Lord Chancellor, one who had been a “principal councillor
and instrument of monarchy,” to publish not verses merely, but common
plays, would have been a disgrace to the peerage, and ingratitude, if not
disloyalty, to the sovereign to whom he owed his many promotions.
Amongst the reasons for concealment, which did not exist at the opening of
life, two more may be mentioned: one, the publication of the Sonnets, has
been sufficiently discussed; the other, solicitude for the Great Instauration,
has not. In casting about for an explanation of his frigid reception by
contemporary science, Bacon must have hit upon a suspicion, shared maybe
by King James,22 that his true greatness after all lay rather in the domain of
poetry than in that of philosophy.23 Disappointed in his contemporaries, he
would turn to the ages unborn, resolved that they at any rate should not start
with a bias against his message. Any suggestion therefore, that he should
allow his true name to be put to a volume of poetry, so distinguished from
versified theology, would be unconditionally rejected.
To the objection founded on the Translation of certain Psalms into
English Verse several answers suggest themselves. No artist is always at his
best, least of all in illness and old age, and the Translation belongs to 1624
when Bacon was recovering from an attack of a painful disease. In the
delightful preface to his select edition of Wordsworth’s Poems, Matthew
Arnold writes: “Work altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat and
dull, is produced by him (Wordsworth) with evident unconsciousness of its
defects and he presents it to us with the same faith and seriousness as his
best work.” Yet no competent judge of poetry would think of denying that
Wordsworth was a “true poet” of a “high order.”[43] Again, conventional
feeling may have been partly responsible for the dullness of this
Translation. Dr. Abbott surely underrates the consequence of his admission
that “theological verse like theological sculpture might seem to require
something of the archaic, and a close adherence to the simplicity of the
original prose.” Grant that Bacon was under the influence of some such
feeling, and the objection we are considering is virtually answered, such
was “Bacon’s versatility in adapting language to the slightest shade of
circumstance and purpose.” Once more, the evidence that Bacon was a
“concealed poet” is strong enough to hold its own against every argument
that can fairly be urged against it, and to concealment dissimulation is apt to
prove indispensable. It was so considered by Bacon, and Bacon’s
experience of the device was extensive, if not unique. In a famous Essay he
carefully distinguishes between Simulation and Dissimulation, and lets it be
seen that he regarded the former as positively culpable, the latter as not only
permissible but necessary.24 A man dissimulates when he “lets fall signs or
arguments that he is not that he is.... He that will be secret must be a
dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning to suffer a man to keep
an indifferent carriage.... They will so beset a man with questions and draw
him on and pick it out of him, that without an absurd silence he must show
inclination one way.... So that no man can be secret except he give himself a
little scope of dissimulation; which is as it were but the skirts or train of
secrecy.” The application is obvious. Bacon’s Translation of Certain Psalms
is uninspired, lacks “choiceness of phrase ... the sweet falling of the
clauses,” etc! Why? Possibly because the author “is letting fall signs or
arguments that he is not that he is!” The fact that a thing so trivial as this
Translation should have been published, instead of being reserved for
private circulation only—published too on the heels of the Shakespeare
First Folio—lends additional probability to this explanation.25
Objection number three. On the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a pen-
name of Bacon’s this objection, like the last, would fall to the ground, for
the essential inadequacy of the Advancement of Learning in relation to
poetry would explain itself as part of the “train of secrecy.” But it may also
be answered without resorting to the hypothesis. In the Advancement,
dramatic poesy, though recognised, is deprived of its customary name,
“dramatic,” and dubbed “representative,” whilst lyric, elegiac, and several
other kinds of poetry are conspicuously ignored. The Latin version of the
Advancement, however, the De Augmentis Scientiarum, published some
eighteen years after the Advancement, not only restores to “representative
poesy” its proper name “dramatic,” but also mentions elegias, odes, lyricos,
etc. The objection, as I understand it, is founded on the assumption that, at
the date of the Advancement, Bacon had still to learn what poetry
essentially was, a defect which at the date of the De Augmentis he had
contrived to supply by getting up the subject (poetry) much as a lawyer will
cram an unfamiliar subject in order to speak to his brief. But is there
warrant for so questionable an assumption? Not a scrap. To see its
absurdity, one has only to compare the Advancement of Learning with the
Apologie for Poetry by the “learned” Sir Philip Sidney (so the author is
described on the title page), a treatise which somehow or other made its
first appearance in 1595, and its second under a different title and with
slight additions in 1596.26 One of the many resemblances involved in the
comparison is, not that Sidney and Bacon appear to have read the same
books, but that their literary preference should have coincided so closely.
Among classical authors, Plutarch was manifestly the prime favourite of
both. Next after Plutarch seem to have come Virgil, Cicero, Seneca, and
Ovid. The Bible, it is true, plays a far more important part in the
Advancement than in the Apologie, inevitably, considering the scope of the
Advancement, and that it was specially addressed to a theological king. In
those days, however, libraries were so scantily furnished that lovers of
literature necessarily became acquainted with what seems to be an
unusually large proportion of the same authors.27 It may, therefore, be
urged that similarity of literary preference did not imply direct
intercommunication. I will not argue the point, not because it is
incontestable, but because there are other resemblances the cumulative
force of which is more than enough for my purpose. The production of a
sample half dozen of these will I hope be forgiven. (a) According to the
Apologie for Poetrie geometry and arithmetic would seem to be the only
constituents of the science of mathematics. The Advancement of Learning
appears to take the same view. (b) According to the Apologie “knowledge of
a man’s self” is the highest or “mistress” knowledge, and her highest end is
“well doing and not well knowing only.” The Advancement holds “the end
and term of natural philosophy” is “knowledge of ourselves” with a view to
“active life” rather than to contemplative. (c) According to the Apologie
“metaphysic” concerns itself with “abstract notions,” builds upon “the
depths of Nature” as distinct from Matter. The Advancement defines
“metaphysic”—which includes mathematics—as the science of “that which
is abstracted and fixed,” “physic” being the science of “that which is
inherent in matter and therefore transitory.” (d) The Apologie censures
philosophers for reducing “true points of knowledge” into “method” and
“school art.” In the Advancement, Bacon condemns “the over early and
peremptory reduction of knowledge into acts and methods.” It is a theme on
which he is ever ready to descant. Indeed, the Novum Organum, a congeries
of aphorisms, was probably designed for a monumental warning against
premature systematisation. (e) The Apologie contrasts the necessary
limitations of other artists28 with the perfect freedom of the poet: “only the
poet ... goeth hand in hand with nature, not inclosed within the narrow
warrant of her gifts ... where with the force of a divine breath he bringeth
things forth for surpassing her doings, with no small argument to the
incredulous of the first accursed fall of Adam; sith our erected wit maketh
us know what perfection is.” The Advancement, in a charming passage,
instructs us that one of the chief uses of poetry “hath been to give some
shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the
nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the
soul.... Therefore poesy was ever thought to have some participation of
divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the
shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and
bow the mind into the nature of things.” (f) The Apologie holds “that there
are many mysteries contained in poetry which of purpose were written
darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused.” The Advancement affirms
that one of the uses of poesy is to “retire and obscure ... that which is
delivered,” “that is when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and
philosophy are involved in fables and parables.” (g) The author of the
Apologie venerated learning—“the noble name of learning,” he calls it—as
if it were a sort of talisman. Bacon’s attitude towards learning, the theme of
the Advancement, probably differed but little, if it differed at all from that of
the Apologist. (h) The aims of the two authors were to a large extent
identical, for the first book of the Advancement was a vindication of the
dignity and importance of Poetry as one of the chief constituents of
“learning.” Other resemblances, more or less significant, will doubtless be
picked up by any alert reader. So numerous are they in the earlier portion of
the Advancement that reading it one seems to be continually in touch with
Sidney—assuming him to have been author of the Apologie. The effect in
my own case has been such as to generate a conviction not indeed that
Sidney and Bacon were personally intimate—though that is quite possible
—but that Bacon when writing the Advancement was thoroughly familiar
with the Apologie.
It appears then that the poetical defects or eccentricities of the
Advancement, to whatever cause they may have been due—and honest
dissimulation is the most likely cause—were not due to ignorance of poetry.
Consequently the last of the three objections fails of effect.
“But,” says one, “suppose for a moment that your precious theory is not
incoherent, what then? A dream is not less a dream because it happens to
hang together. So with your theory. Its value is of the smallest unless it
serve to harmonise or explain phenomena otherwise intractable. The
omission to apply this test is fatal to your pretensions.” I have no fault to
find with the criticism, except that it is founded on misapprehension. It
takes for granted that I have undertaken to establish something, a Bacon
theory to wit. That feat may be possible to an able advocate, after a “harvest
of new disclosures.” For my part, so diffident am I of my power to do
anything of the kind, that the thought of attempting it here had not even
occurred to me.
For the rest, on good cause shown my precious theory will be abandoned
without reserve and without a pang, though I shall hardly be able to rise to
that fullness of joy which according to M. Poincaré (Le Science et
l’Hypothèse) ought to be felt by the physicist who has just renounced a
favourite hypothesis because it has failed to satisfy a crucial test.
NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE—A THEORY
[1] Note: The words philosopher, philosophy, philosophicals throughout this paper mean
what they meant in Bacon’s day. The word science, on the other hand, when not in quotation, is
to be understood in its modern sense.
[2] From Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie (of which more hereafter) we learn that he was in the
secret of some “Queis meliore luto finxit præcordia Titan, and who are better content to suppress
the outflowing of their wit than by publishing it to be accounted knights of the same order” as
those “servile wits who think it enough to be rewarded of the printer.” Similarly Puttenham, in
his Arte of English Poesie (1589), writes: “I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court
that have written commendably and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be publisht without
their names to it.” The Arte of English Poesie was dedicated to Bacon’s uncle and quasi
guardian, Lord Burleigh. In this connexion, a saying ascribed to Edmund Waller is worth notice:
“Sidney and Bacon were nightingales who sang only in the spring, it was the diversion of their
youth.”
[3] From Mr. Shakespeare’s autographs one gathers that he was indifferent as to the spelling
of his name, and that if he had a preference, it was for the form Shakspere rather than
Shakespeare. For my present purpose it is necessary to distinguish between the owner of New
Place, Stratford, and the author of Macbeth and Lear. For the former, Shakspere would have
been better than “Mr. Shakespeare.” But having followed the Belvoir document so far, I shall
continue to use “Mr.” as the distinction between the two—without prejudice to the question
whether or not they were actually one and the same. [The signatures show that the Stratford
player wrote his name “Shakspere.” He seems never to have made use of the form
“Shakespeare,” which is, in truth, a quite different name from that of “Shakspere,” or
“Shaksper,” or “Shaxpur,” and such like forms. Ed.
[4] Some will have it that Shakespeare was a kind of writing machine, and look to Ben
Jonson as their prophet. Yet Jonson’s testimony both in the great Ode to Shakespeare and
elsewhere—agreeing herein with the internal evidence of several of the plays—negatives a
mechanical explanation.
[5] In the case of something which apparently “grew from” himself, dealt with the Deposing
of Richard II, and “went about in other men’s names,” pseudonymity seems to have failed to
screen Bacon from cross-examination and censure by Queen Elizabeth. (Bacon’s Apologie in
certaine imputations concerning the late Earl of Essex. 1604.)
[6] Browning and others less eminent than he have questioned the autobiographical value of
the Sonnets. Even so they would be serious impedimenta to a Solicitor-General on his way to the
Attorney-Generalship, Privy Councillorship, and other conspicuous offices.
[7] It is obviously borrowed, mutatis mutandis, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “Deeper than
did ever plummet sound,” however, is not from Ovid’s Medea, but it seems to me from Act III,
Sc. 3, of The Tempest itself. Golding’s English version of the Metamorphoses may well have
been in the writer’s mind along with the Latin original.
[8] Advancement of Learning. “Art of Arts” was a favourite phrase of his. Of “rational
knowledges” he says in the same book: “These be truly said to be the art of arts.”
[9] The idée mère of the Sapientia Veterum—allegorisation—is one which I think no notable
man of science among his contemporaries would have attempted to press into the service of
science as Bacon pressed it. With contemporary men of letters, poets especially, it was in high
favour, partly I suppose as an exercise of ingenuity, partly as a “talking point” wherewith to
capture the vulgar, and partly of course for higher reasons. Sir John Harington’s application of it
to Orlando Furioso (1591), is a reductio ad absurdum of the fashion.
[10] Poetry for example!
[11] The second book of the Advancement—where “rational knowledges” or “arts
intellectual” are being discussed—promises, “if God give me leave, a disquisition, digested into
two parts; whereof the one I term experientia literata, and the other interpretatio naturæ, the
former being but a degree or rudiment of the latter.” What the latter was in 1605 is matter of
conjecture. Possibly Valerius Terminus, Of the Interpretation of Nature, with the Annotations of
Hermes Stella, a curious essay, seemingly meant to be anonymous, or pseudonymous, may
enable us to measure its value. Concerning the former, experientia literata, we may learn from
the De Augmentis Scientiarum, the authorised Latin version of the Advancement of Learning,
quite as much as any of us need wish to know.
It may be well to bear in mind that in addition to the above double promise, the
Advancement of Learning contains other promises including one, “if God give me leave,” of a
legal work—prudentia activa—digested into aphorisms.
[12] The nebulous Temporis Partus Maximus, of very uncertain date, was scarcely more
serious, I suppose, than the eloquent eulogies of “knowledge” or “philosophy” in Bacon’s
“apparently unacknowledged” Conference of Pleasure, 1592, and Gesta Graiorum, 1594,
though towards the close of his life he seems to have claimed for it a somewhat higher value.
[13] According to Professor Fowler (Francis Bacon, Macmillan) the foundation of the Royal
Society was due to the impulse given by Bacon to experimental science. Dr. Abbott (Francis
Bacon, Macmillan) is struck by a different aspect of Bacon: “By a strange irony the great
depreciator of words seems destined to derive an immortal memory from the rich variety of his
style and the vastness of his too sanguine expectations.” I cannot help doubting whether, if
Bacon had died before 1620 or thereabouts, he would have been held to have placed
experimental science under any obligation at all.
[14] No student I suppose would willingly be without the volume here quoted, “Francis
Bacon”, by Edwin A. Abbott.
[15] Rawley’s dedication, 1627, of the Natural History to Charles the First.
[16] Advancement of Learning. Book I.
[17] The art of prolonging life was, he thought, one of the most desirable.
[18] He “bequeathed” his soul and body to God. “For my name and memory I leave it to
men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next ages.”
[19] Rawley in the dedication of 1627 uses this expression as if it were Bacon’s rather than
his own.
[20] I am not aware that in its integrity it is shared by anyone.
[21] More easily by far than Mr. Shakespeare’s neglect of his supposed poetical issue more
especially after his retirement to Stratford. What was there, what would there be in the Stratford
of those days with its Quineys, Harts, Sadlers, Walkers, and the rest, to interest a spirit so finely
touched as Shakespeare’s? But this is too large a question to be discussed here.
[22] James I is reported to have said of the Novum Organum: “It is like the peace of God
which passeth all understanding.”
Bacon’s tripartite division of knowledge—history with memory for its organ, poetry
[23]
with imagination, and philosophy with reason—is well known. When he made this division the
poetic use of the imagination was one which few may have known better than he. That he was
equally well acquainted with the scientific use of the imagination is highly improbable.
[24] Sir P. Sidney seems to have arrived at a like conclusion, for he speaks of an “honest
dissimulation.”
[25] Whether the absence of proof that Bacon, as Dr. Abbott observes, “felt any pride in or
set any value on his unique mastery of English” should be similarly interpreted is a more
difficult question. Possibly admiration of his vernacular became nauseous to him as suggesting
something less than admiration of his philosophy. Of his Latin, the Latin of the Sapientia
Veterum, he writes to his friend: “They tell me my Latin is turned silver and become current.”
His apparent indifference to vehicle or language therefore did not extend beyond his mother
tongue.
[26] It must have circulated privately some years before 1595, for Sir John Harington in his
English version (1591) of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, calls Sidney “our English Petrarke,” and
refers to his Apologie for Poetry (along with the Arte of English Poesie, 1589, dedicated to Lord
Burleigh) as handling sundry poetical questions “right learnedly.” I may add that the motto to
Sidney’s Apologie—odi profanum vulgus et arceo—touches the motto to Shakespeare’s Venus
and Adonis; that King Lear touches the Arcadia; and generally that a complete enumeration of
the apparent contacts between Sidney and Shakespeare would probably fill many pages. [Some
have even ventured to doubt whether the poetry which goes in the name of Sidney, who died at
Zutphen in 1586, was really written by Sidney at all. Ed.
[27] It is interesting to note in relation to Aristotle, who is cited again and again in both
Advancement and Apologie, that the Apologie endorses his dramatic precept of “one place, one
day.” Another of the Apologie’s references to Aristotle: “which reason of his, as all his, is most
full of reason,” gives one to think. The Advancement disapproves, it may be added, of tying
modern tongues to ancient measures: “In modern languages it seemeth to me as free to make
new measures of verses as of dances.”
[28] Astronomy and metaphysic are there considered as arts, whilst poetry ranks as a
science.
BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE BEN JONSON
AND SHAKESPEARE[44]
Another exasperating lucubration on the Shakespeare problem! We have
the Plays themselves. Why disturb a venerable belief by hypotheses
incapable of proof, and neither venerable nor even respectable? To answer
offhand—Curiosity about the How of remarkable events is not likely to die
out so long as intelligent beings continue to exist: Without the aid of
hypotheses, science were impossible: Astronomers would still be
expounding the once venerated doctrine of a stable Earth and a revolving
Sun, a doctrine daily corroborated by the testimony of our eyes. Moreover,
the “venerable belief” that Shakspere and Shakespeare were one and the
same is mainly founded on the hypothesis that Ben Jonson’s famous Ode to
Shakespeare (1623) is all to be taken at face-value. Praise—splendid praise
—is unquestionably its dominant constituent; but other ingredients—
enigma, jest, make-believe—are commingled with the praise.
The exordium of this Ode consists of sixteen laborious lines:
To return to the Ode. The lines which follow the “Sweet Swan”
apostrophe are deserving of notice, chiefly because they tell us that King
James (as well as Queen Elizabeth) was under the spell of Shakespeare.
Then comes the ejaculation: “But stay! I see thee in the hemisphere
advanced, and made a constellation there.” Is it possible that Jonson
expected his readers—such of them as were not in the secret—to follow
him here? To behold Shakespeare, à la Berenice’s hair, translated into the
constellation Cygnus? Not he; that were an order too large for credulity
itself to honour. What Jonson had in his mind’s eye was not the starry
heaven, but the British House of Peers.[48] Such is this famous Ode. It
suffers from manœuvres, the object of which had to be kept dark; and this I
take to be the reason for its exclusion from the second volume (1640) of
Jonson’s Works, where it would have been quite at home amongst the Odes,
Sonnets, Elegies and so forth, which go to make up that volume.
Turn we now to Jonson’s Timber or Discoveries, a work written years
after the Ode and not printed till 1641, some three or four years after his
death. These Discoveries consist in the main of passages lifted from Latin
writers, notably Seneca the father (Controversiæ), and entered
promiscuously in Jonson’s Commonplace books. The borrowings are often
mutilated and always treated without ceremony. For our purpose it is the
application, not the accuracy of translation that matters. In quoting from
them I shall give italics and capital letters as they appear in the slovenly
print (1641), of which I have several copies, one of which by the way is
inscribed “J. P. Collier” on the title page. A Discovery concerning Poets,
runs thus:
Nothing in our Age, I have observed, is more preposterous, than the
running Judgments upon Poetry and Poets; when we shall heare those
things ... cried up for the best writings, which a man would scarce
vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his
Tobacco with them.... There are never wanting, that dare preferre the worst
... Poets:.... Nay, if it were put to the question of the Water-rimers workes,
against Spencer’s, I doubt not but they [the Water-rimers’] would find
more suffrages.
From this the reader will gather that under “Eliza and our James,”
lawyer-poets who masked their poems—“in a players hide,” perhaps—were
likely candidates for legal honours.
Another Discovery (p. 99)[49] censures “all the Essayists, even their
Master Montaigne.” The slur suggested by this censure upon Bacon is
significant. We were wont to believe that Bacon’s fame as a master of
English rested securely on his Essays, and perhaps among his
acknowledged works no better foundation is discoverable. Jonson’s estimate
(to be quoted presently) of Bacon’s achievement “in our tongue,” is at least
as high as ours. Yet Jonson does not appreciate Bacon’s Essays. The
dilemma seems to be this: either Jonson was writing at random, or he knew
of unacknowledged Baconian work which he was not free to disclose.
Another Discovery treats De claris Oratoribus, and among them of
Dominus Verulamius[50] in these words:
There hapn’d in my time one noble Speaker, who was full of gravity in
his speaking. His language (where hee could spare or passe by a jest) was
nobly censorious.... No member of his speech but consisted of his owne
graces. His hearers could not cough, or looke aside from him, without
losse.... No man had their affections more in his power. The feare of every
man that heard him was lest hee should make an end.
In order to appreciate this passage, the reader should grasp (1) that
Jonson’s mind at the time was full of memories of Bacon; (2) that in a
subsequent Discovery—De Poetica—he distinguishes Poetry from oratory
as “the most prevailing,” “most exalted” “Eloquence,” and describes the
Poet’s “skill or Craft of making” as the “Queene of Arts”; (3) that Jonson,
proud of his own métier as poet, would never have allowed, still less
asserted, that Bacon had “filled up all numbers,” had he not known that
Bacon was a great poet. Where is this wonderful poetry to be found? The
answer is ready to hand. The famous writer who, according to the
Discovery, had “perform’d that in our tongue” which neither Greece nor
Rome could surpass, is the very man who, according to the Ode, had
achieved that in English which defied “comparison” with “all” that Greece
or Rome, or the civilisations that succeeded Greece and Rome, had given to
the World. Bacon is that Man, and Shakespeare was his pen-name.
This hypothesis—that Shakespeare was the pen-name of Bacon—will
pilot us through our difficulties. The disclaimer (in the Ode) for example, of
any intention to injure the august name need puzzle us no longer. Bacon’s
reputation was imperilled by publication of the great Book; for if the Public
once got wind that he had trafficked with “common players” his name,
already smirched by the verdict of the House of Peers, would have been
irreparably damaged. A passage from an anonymous Essay of mine (Bacon-
Shakespeare; projected 1884-5: published 1899), may be tolerated here. The
Essay, after having suggested that Greene’s allusion to Shakespeare as
having a “tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide” pointed to concealment
behind an actor, proceeds:
John Davies ... characterises poetry (contemporaneous) as “a worke of
darkness,” in the sense of a secret work, not in disparagement: Davies
loved poetry and poets too well for that. The anonymous author of Wit’s
Recreations, in a kindly epigram “To Mr. William Shake-speare,” says:
“Shake-speare we must be silent in thy praise, cause our encomions will
but blast thy bayes.” ... Edward Bolton in the ... sketch (or draft) of his
Hypercritica, ... after having mentioned “Shakespeare, Beaumont, and
other writers for the stage” thinks it necessary to remind himself that their
names required to be “tenderly used in this argument.” (accordingly) He ...
excluded the name of Shakespeare ... from the published version of his
Hypercritica.
To return again to the Ode. Its jests about shaking a stage (compare
Greene’s “Shakescene”), shaking a lance, and its ecstatic vision of
Shakespeare enthroned among the stars were no doubt intended to amuse
the two Earls, and other patrons of the famous Folio.
As for the sweeping accusation in the Timber or Discoveries, that Poetry
had been a mean Mistress to openly professed as distinguished from furtive
or concealed poets, it would have been unpardonable had the Stratford man
been a poet; for William Shakspere, Esq., of New Place, Stratford-on-Avon,
spent his last years in the odour of prosperity.
Other testimony, quite independent of Jonson’s, to the existence of an
intimate relation between Bacon and the Muses, Apollo, Helicon,
Parnassus, is abundant enough. Here are a few samples: Thomas Randolph
shortly after Bacon’s death accuses Phœbus of being accessory to Bacon’s
death, lest the God himself should be dethroned and Bacon be crowned king
of the Muses.[52] George Herbert calls Bacon the colleague of Apollo.
Thomas Campion, addressing Bacon says: “Whether ... the Law, or the
Schools (in the sense of science or knowledge), or the sweet Muse allure
thee,” etc. At a somewhat later date, Waller said that Bacon and Sidney
were nightingales who sang only in the spring (the reference has escaped
me, and memory may possibly deceive me).[53] Coming to comparatively
recent times we find Shelley, an exceptional judge of poetry, was of opinion
that Bacon “was a poet.” It may possibly be objected that Bacon’s versified
Psalms (in English) are not poetical.[54] But these Psalms belong to about
1624, when Bacon—ex hypothesi—had turned his back on poetry for ever.
What they prove, if they prove anything, is that Bacon was a literary
Proteus who could take on any disguise that happened to suit his purpose, a
faculty which no student of Bacon would ever think of disputing.
Inferences drawn from Bacon’s reticence or extracted from his works
have yet to be weighed. In the nineties of the sixteenth century he can be
shown to have devoted much time and thought to the writing and
preparation of a species of dramatic entertainment known as Devices. Even
after he became Lord Chancellor, he risked injuring his health rather than
deny himself the pleasure of assisting at a dramatic performance given by
Gray’s Inn. As a student of human nature, moreover, he had scarcely an
equal (bar “Shakespeare.”) And yet he seems to have been ignorant of the
existence of any such person as Shakespeare, although that name must have
been bandied about and about in the London of his day, especially among
members of the various Inns of Court, his own Gray’s in particular.
Neglecting Bacon’s poetical and interesting Devices, I confine my
observations to the Advancement of Learning (1605), which though not
written in what Waller held to be the singing time of life, reveals (while
trying to conceal) the true bent of his genius. The Work was expressly
intended to embrace the totality of human knowledge then garnered. Yet
with the air of one who had no misgivings about the propriety of his
classification he divides his vast subject into three categories, three only,
and one of these is Poesie. The other two are History and Philosophie, the
latter of which embraces “Natural Science,” divided into “Phisicke” and
“Metaphisicke,” “Mathematicke” pure and mixt, anatomy, medicine, mental
and moral science, and much besides. The work teems with poetical
quotations, similies, allusions. Dealing with medicine the author gravely
informs his readers that “the poets did well to conjoin music and medicine
in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of
man’s body, and reduce it to harmony.” He cannot refrain from telling us
that the pseudo-science of the alchemist was foretold and discredited by the
fable of Ixion and the Cloud. With him, what we mean by endowment of
research becomes provision for encouraging “experiments appertaining to
Vulcan and Dædalus,” etc. No wonder the Harveys, Napiers, and other
pioneers of 17th. century science did not join in that chorus of admiration
for Bacon, which seems to have included all 17th century men of letters. Sir
Henry Wotton (for example) will have it that Bacon had “done a great and
ever living benefit to all the children of Nature; and to Nature herself in her
uttermost extent ... who never before had so noble nor so true an interpreter,
or so inward a secretary of her cabinet.” One can imagine the laughter with
which Galileo would have greeted this preposterous assertion.
Out of sight of philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, etc., and in the
presence of poetry, the author is in his element and speaks with authority. In
handling the subject of mental culture—“Georgics of the mind” is his
phrase—he takes for granted that poets (with whom he couples historians)
are the best teachers of this science, for in them:
We may find painted forth, how affections are kindled and incited; and
how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further
degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary;
how they gather and fortify; how they are enwrapped one within another;
and how they do fight and encounter one with another.
In other words, the Novum Organum, the potent New Instrument that
was to enlarge man’s dominion over every province of Nature, was Bacon’s
chief solace for an unparalleled renunciation. Posterity, he was determined,
should never know that the inventor of that Instrument had once revelled in
the play of the imagination, lest men of science should have it in their
power to pooh-pooh it as the fabric of a brain that had invented A
Midsummer-night’s Dream, and The Tempest.
Bacon and his friends (moved by the fascination of the man, and pity for
his fall) would naturally destroy all tell-tale correspondence they could lay
hands on. Two private letters, and so far as we know, two only, escaped the
flames. One from a bosom friend, Sir T. Mathew to Bacon (“Viscount St.
Alban”), bears the following postscript: “The most prodigious wit that ever
I knew of my nation ... is of your Lordship’s name, though he be known by
another.” This letter is given in Dr. Birch’s Letters, etc., of Francis Bacon,
1763. Mathew himself made a Collection of Letters which included many
of his own to Bacon, but excluded the one just quoted, an exclusion
dictated, I imagine, by loyalty to his friend. Montague gives the letter in his
Bacon, but I have not found it in Spedding’s Work. The other escape was a
letter of Bacon’s to another of his friends, the poet Davies, written some
twenty years earlier than Mathew’s letter. In this letter (to Davies), after
commending himself to Davies’s “love,” and “the well using of my name ...
if there be any biting or nibling at it, in that place” (the Royal Court), Bacon
concludes: “So desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue,” etc.
My quotation is from a copy dated 1657 (bound up with Rawley’s
Resuscitatio), in which “concealed poets” is in italics. Spedding gives the
words without the italics, and contents himself with saying that he cannot
explain them. For another letting out of the secret we have to thank
Aubrey’s notebooks, which inform us that Bacon was “a good poet but
concealed, as appears by his letters.” Lastly there are the “Shakespeare” and
“Bacon” scribbles on the half-burnt MS. of Bacon’s “Device,” A
Conference of Pleasure. Possibly the “letters” referred to by Aubrey, or
evidence more important, may yet be discovered in libraries unexplored, or
explored only by orthodox searchers intent on proving their own case. A
library in so unlikely a place as Valladolid seems, about eighty years ago, to
have possessed a First Folio of Shakespeare which belonged to and was
perhaps annotated by Count Gondomar, a friend of Bacon’s last years.[55] If
Spain held such a treasure so recently what may not Great Britain still hold?
Florence, for whose Duke Sir T. Mathew had Bacon’s Essays translated into
Italian, contained a copy of this translation not long ago. But my searches
there, and in Venice, Milan, Padua, were far too hurried to justify any
conclusion as to possible finds in Italy.
It is probably safe to take for granted that Bacon was acquainted with
Shakspere; that the relation between them began maybe as early as 1588,
and was concerned with playhouse property; that this property was held by
Shakspere on trust for Bacon; and that it was sold, perhaps to the trustees,
by Bacon’s orders some time before 1613.
The name of “Shakespeare” seems to have made its first public
appearance in print with Venus and Adonis,[56] a poem which was dedicated
in perfectly well-bred terms to an earl; licensed by an archbishop who had
once been Bacon’s tutor;[57] and expressed on its title page patrician
contempt for all things vulgar. By whose order was the name Shakespeare
printed at foot of its Dedication to the Earl of Southampton? In the dearth of
evidence the following guesses may pass muster. They are put into an
unhistorical present in order to show at a glance that they, or most of them,
are mere guess-work:—About 1592, Bacon makes up his mind to publish
Venus and Adonis. Publication in his own name is vetoed by fear of
offending powerful friends, his uncle Burghley in particular; and he prefers
pseudonymity to anonymity. What he wants is a temporary mask which he
fully expects to be able to throw off before long. In this mood, he calls on
Richard Field, a London printer hailing originally from Stratford, and
recommended to him by Sir John Harington, whose Orlando Furioso Field
has just printed. Field happens to mention Shakspere which he pronounces
Shaxper. Bacon, already acquainted with the young fellow of that name,
decides that a fictitious person, whose name he pronounces Shakespeare,
shall be the putative father of his Poem. Little dreams he, poet though he be,
that he is thereby preparing a human grave for that immortality of Fame (as
poet) which he has begun to anticipate for himself. The Poem appears in
1593; and is followed next year by Lucrece, fathered by the same
Shakespeare, and dedicated to the same young Earl. Some years later, the
name is stereotyped by Meres’s Commonwealth of Wits, where Shakespeare
is mentioned seven or eight times—as the English Ovid; as one of our best
tragic and best comic poets; as one of our most “wittie” and accomplished
writers, and so forth.[58] A few years later still, Bacon begins to be
perplexed what to do with his Shakespeare copyright, and his perplexity
rises with every advance in his profession. Before succeeding to the
Attorney-Generalship he realises once for all that complications,
professional, social, and various, have made it impossible for him to think
of fathering even a selection of his poetical offspring. In despair to escape
from the impasse, he even talks of burning MSS. But the threat is not
carried out. Soon after his melancholy downfall sympathetic and admiring
friends, notably the two Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery—
Southampton probably stood aloof, memories of the Essex affair still
rankling in his mind—take counsel together, expostulate with him, entreat
him to let them bear all expenses and responsibilities connected with
publication, and to clinch their argument tell him that they have sounded the
literary dictator of the day, Ben Jonson, and got his promise to undertake
the work of editing, collecting, writing the necessary prefatory matter, and
so forth. Bacon yields consent on certain conditions, the most embarrassing
of which is that the true authorship of the plays be for ever kept dark—by
means of “dissimulation,” if dissimulation will serve; if not, then by
“simulation,” i.e., the lie direct.[59] The conditions are accepted with
misgivings on Jonson’s part. He is aware that he will have no trouble with
Mr. Shakspere’s executors, their interest in the copyrights involved being as
negligible as their testator’s had been. And he knows Heminge and Condell
well enough to feel certain that they will not have the smallest objection,
either to being assigned prominent places in the forthcoming Book, or to his
putting into their mouths statements, etc., concerning Shakespeare, which
he himself would shrink from uttering. But even so, the task is no sinecure.
Here guess-work ends.
The famous Folio, with its apparatus of Dedication, prefatory Address,
Ode, to “my beloved the author,” etc., made its appearance in 1623. The
Dedication intimates (with ironical emphasis on the word “trifles”) that the
author of these “trifles” was dead, “he not having the fate common with
some to be exequutor to his owne writings.... We have but collected them,
and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes, Guardians: without
ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so
worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare.”
The Address expresses a wish that the Author had lived to set forth “his
owne writings. But since it hath bin ordain’d otherwise, and he by death
departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends the office” of
collection, etc. This is followed by a statement, probably half jest, half
irony, that the Author uttered his thoughts with such “easinesse, that wee
have scarse received from him a blot on his papers.” That Heminge and
Condell had no hand in either Dedication or Address is sufficiently proved
by turns and phrases characteristically Jonsonian. They, I suppose, had
given Jonson carte blanche, and he made use of the gift, in the interest of
literature which might otherwise have suffered irreparable loss. In this way
the fiction of Shakespeare’s identity with Shakspere was so plausibly
documented, that Jonson might have spared himself any further trouble on
that score. But either to make assurance doubly sure, or to show his
dexterity, he set about the writing of his Ode as if the fiction had not been
planted already. Some of the Ode’s features need no further comment than
they have received. But the “small Latin” and “Swan of Avon” allusions
deserve a word or two more. Both passages point at Shakspere and away
from Shakespeare. What was their raison d’être? They were exceptionally
significant touches to an elaborate system of camouflage, by which
posterity, including ourselves, was to be deluded.
Hitherto the accent has been too much on the unessentials of the Ode,
and far too little on its beauties. No nobler contemporary appreciation of
Shakespeare has reached our ears, and that is a cogent reason for gratitude
to its author. Before taking leave of him, I venture to make free with one of
his apostrophes. The lines would then run thus:
These are not the views nor is this the accent of one who has been
devoting himself to natural science. The utterance is that of a genius for
letters whose preoccupation has been the apparelling of beautiful thoughts
in beautiful words.