Critical Analysis of Bacon Essay of Friendship Text

300 Words Essay

Bacon commences with the words what is truth? said jesting pilate, and would not stay for an answer. and the essay ends with the words, surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgment of god upon the generations of men. It being foretold that when christ cometh he shall not find faith upon the earth. It is worthy of note, too, what bacon says of pilate, that he would not stay for an answer implying that there was an answer, but that he did not want to hear it, and this is often the attitude of the world towards any problem that offends it's prejudices, rouses its passions, or dares to challenge its universal consent upon some echoed tradition which has never hitherto been looked into or examined. In his essay of atheism, bacon points out, how the judgment is prejudiced by the feelings or affections, and how the mind is deprived of free judgment by the inclinations of the heart.

The scripture saith, 'the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god' it is not said, the fool hath thought in his heart,' so as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it or be persuaded of it. This equally applies to the nature of all human beliefs that are allied by custom with consent and sentiment and perhaps most of all to the opposers of the bacon authorship of the plays. They, like pilate, will not stay for an answer, or give a learning patience to the problem, and in their hearts declare the theory a heresy, a foolish fad, an impossibility. coming in a man's own name, bacon declares, is no infallible sign of truth. For certainly there cometh to pass, and hath place in human truth, that which was noted and pronounced in the highest truth.

veni in nomine patris, nec recipitis me si quis venetit in nomine suo, eum recipietis i came in the name of the father, but ye did not receive me if any one shall come in his own name, him ye receive. But in this divine aphorism considering to whom it was applied, namely, to antichrist, the highest deceiver we may discern well that the coming in a man's own name, without regard of antiquity or paternity, is no good sign of truth, although it be joined with the fortune and success of an eum recipietis and book advancement of learning, p.99. Therefore the coming of shakespeare in his own name, although he has been received without question, is not an infallible sign of truth. Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in the sciences, by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men accounted great in philosophy, and then by general consent. and with regard to authority it shows a feeble mind to grant so much to authors, and yet deny time his rights, who is the author of authors, nay, rather of all authority. By consent bacon means, the world's general or universal assent, or tradition as, for example, that shakespeare is the author of the 1623 folio plays.

The world often mistakes echoes for volume, and there is the popular fallacy that counting of heads is proof of truth. But in matters intellectual it is not as with physical power or wealth there is no aggregate or arithmetical sum total, as, for example, when men pull on a rope or heap up money. But it is rather as in a race, where only a few can be first, and there is no addition of speeds.

Hear bacon: for the worst of all auguries is from consent in matters intellectual divinity excepted, and politics where there is right of vote. For nothing pleases the many unless it strikes the imagination, or binds the understanding with the bonds of common notions aphorism 77, novum organum. therefore the saying, that the world says, or the world believes, though to be respected, is not final, and should not deter us from examining anew problems which the past generations had probably no time or curiosity to question. Besides, as bacon says, in this essay of truth, the first creature of god, in the work of the days, was the light of the senses, the last was the light of reason and his sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his spirit. In the midst of the sun is the light, in the midst of light is truth, and in the midst of truth is the imperishable being.

In this essay of truth bacon says, one of the late school of the grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets nor for advantage, as with the merchant but for the lies sake. This same truth is a naked and open day light, that doth not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle lights. For in and out, above, about, below, ' tis nothing but a magic shadow show, play'd in a box whose candle is the sun, round which we phantom figures come and go! truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights.

Observe the apology for poetical fiction in this passage, which presently we find repeated with something of an explanation: one of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum the wine of the devils ,because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. that is to say, poetical fiction or invention, although it obscures truth, or veils it, is not all falsehood, and all parabolical poetry shadows, under tropes of similitude's, a concealed meaning of truth. It would seem, then, that this essay of truth is a sort of apology for the poetical veil, or masque of truth, upon the score of man's dislike, or incapability, of receiving unadulterated truth itself? bacon uses the expression i cannot tell to excuse himself explanation of the world's love of lies. In the play of richard i the same phrase in introduced, together with what would seem to answer the question in context with it: i cannot tell: the world is grown so bad that wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch. Christ exclaimed that the world cannot receive truth, and bacon implies the same thing, and he then proceeds to explain that the disguises and actings of the world's stage are better adapted, than the searchlight of open daylight, for the half lights of the theatre.

If the reader will turn to the essay entitled of masques and triumphs, he will find complete proof that this is an allusion to the stage in the essay of truth. and it would seem as if there existed some sort of antithesis between these two essays, i.e. The world's love of pleasure is so great, satis alter alteri magnum theatrum sumus we are sufficently the great theatre of each other , all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, and acting has little consonance with truth. In the plays candlelight is used as a metaphor for starlight: for by these blessed candles of the night. Masques were dramatic performances in which the actors were disguised by the wearing of masks which concealed their features, and so their identity.

bacon commences his essay of masques and triumphs with the words, these things are but toys, and concludes the essay with the words, but enough of these toys. It is most important to point out, that heminge and condell, in their dedicatory preface to their patrons the earls of pembroke and montgomery in the first edition of the folio plays, published in 1623, employ the word trifles to indicate the plays they are editing: for. Sustain, we cannot but know their dignity greater, than to descend to the reading of these trifles. this point seems to me very pertinent to the entire subject of the essay and authorship of the plays , and is a hint of the very first importance as to whether bacon wore a mask known as shakespeare.

But the introduction of this subject, in connection with poetry, and with an apology for the poets' shadow of a lie, on account of the pleasure afforded by the dainty shows of the theatre, seen by candlelight, is a hint that only the most obstinately blind or obtuse person can decline to perceive. The first masque, in england, was held at greenwhich palace where king henry the eighth was born , the first disguise in the year 1513, on the day of the epiphany , after the manner of italy called a masque. In love's labour lost we have a masque introduced, and also scene in king henry the eighth where the royal dancers are masked.

Bacon is telling us that man does not care about abstract truth, and when he says men do not care for open daylight, he is speaking very truly. For he points out that the archflatterer with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self essay of love . Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? this is as much as to say, that most men walk in a vain show, and are actors, i.e. Play up rather to the parts they imagine they possess, than are what they really are by nature.