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232 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
If the lookers-on be affected with pleasure in the representation of
a feigned tragedy.
A lively tragedy.
Pen tragedies of blood.
Your life is
nothing but a continual acting upon a stage.
From the " Promus " (" Store-room of elegant speeches '') :
A good comediante.
She is bright. She may be taken in play.
Sometimes a stander-by seeth more than a plater.
lisdem e'
et comedia.
literis efficitur tragaedia
From " Private Papers " :
I have no desire to stage myself.
From the writings on the Essex trial :
About that time there did fly about in London streets and theatres
divers seditious libels.
This being the platform of their enterprise, the second act of this
tragedy was also resolved.
Edward II., who was made prisoner, and soon after forced to
resign, and in the end tragically murdered in Barkley Castle.
That the afternoon before the rebellion, Merricke with a great
company of others that afterwards were all in the action, had pro
cured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard II.*
Neither was it casual, but a play bespoken by Merricke.
And not so only, but when it was told him by one of the players,
that the play was old, and they should have lost in playing it ;
there
were forty shillings extraordinary given to play it, and so thereupon
played
it was.
So earnest was he to satisfy his eyes with the sight of that
tragedy, which he thought soon after his Lord should bring from the
stage to the state, but that God turned it
upon their own heads.
From the accusation by Francis Bacon in his capacity as
Attorney-General against the Earl and Countess of Somerset,
charging with poisoning:
But that they remained rather spectacles of justice
in their con
tinual imprisonment, than monuments of justice in the memory of
their suffering.
* Mr. Spedding's inexcusable statement "
: I very much doubt
"
whether Bacon had ever heard of Shakespeare's Plays (that male
volent, hair-bristling distortion of facts) is here finally refuted by
Bacon's own words.