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134 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
Everything in the Essays aims at playing, plays,
poetry and dramatic art at " Shakespeare." Thus
also the beautiful comparison of poetry to the " shadow
of a Lie " affords us a parallel to the opening words in
the Epilogue to A Midsummer- Night's Dream, spoken
by Puck " If we shadows have offended." Both in
:
the Essay and in the Comedy poetic figures are
counted as "Shadows," Shadows of a Lie, sweet
Shadows of a poet's thoughts.
We must remember, however, that two years before
the publication of the Essays, the first
Shakespeare
Folio Edition had appeared. Also, that the first Play
contained in that edition of 1623 is The Tempest.
Finally, that the first scene, i.e., that which is written
on the first
page of the whole book, depicts a storm at
sea and a sinking ship.
Accordingly, Bacon's first Essay, which appeared a
year and a half after the first publication of The
Tempest, contains, besides the Song of Praise to the
Stage-Art, and Poetic Lies, and besides the com
parison with the "play " of (the colours in) a diamond,
a direct allusion to the first scene in the large book
which Bacon had in mind when he wrote the Essay,
i.e., an allusion to his Shakespeare Folio of the year
1623. The Essay describes a storm at sea, and
represents it as a glorious sight, as a pleasant play.
Bacon, however, does not make this disclosure in so
many blunt words, but in his own particular style and
after the fashion of his contemporaries, allegoricallyof
the
He takes a well-known passage from the poem
Roman poet, Lucrece, entitled " De Rerum Natura "
(" On the Nature of Things the "), opening
lines of the
Second Book. But he alters that quotation as he thinks