Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/265

 *porary of the Trojans. Neither would he have affronted his historical sense and hurt his reputation as a scholar by importing into "Henry VI.," and attributing to Jack Cade and his followers, the socialistic doctrine and mad behavior which Holingshed shows to have belonged to Wat Tyler in the reign of Richard II. It is also strange that the scholar, Bacon, should have put into the mouth of a person in "Coriolanus," i. 4, line 57, that allusion to Cato,—

"Thou wast a soldier Even to Cato's wish."

M. Porcius Cato was born 234: the play belongs to 490. And if anybody knew when Galen was born, 130, it was Bacon; yet Menenius, in the same play, ii. 1, line 128, says, "The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic." But Shakspeare's main object was to write a play, and co-ordinate his groups. So he paired off his characteristics with each other to gratify the poetic exigency of the play, and not always to render strict tribute to the Muse of History.

Can anybody positively deny that Shakspeare stole away from the Mermaid more often then his fellow-actors and poets relished, to spend the evening with Essex at Gray's Inn, perhaps while Bacon was busy upon his "Characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar" in 1607-8,—for not long after that the famous tragedy appeared; perhaps to urge him with the happy suggestions of friendship to write his Defence of Shakspeare's own dear Essex? There was, indeed, that "semblable coherence" between the spirits of the phi