Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY.
Ill
after we have seen it, and we are no whit the wiser, though at
the time we may have been the merrier, and that is not a bad
thing.
Bacon perceived, doubtless by his own youthful experience,
that men are far more readily impressed by what they see than
by what they hear or read. That, moreover, they must be
amused, and that the manner and means of their recreation are
matters of no slight importance. For the bow cannot always
be bent, and to make times of leisure truly recreative and
profitable to mind as well as body, was, he thought, a thing
much to be wished, and too long neglected. The lowest and
poorest, as well as the most dissipated or the most cultivated,
love shows and stage plays. He loved them himself. Would it
not be possible to make the drama a complete (though unrecognised)
school of instruction in morals, manners, and politics,
and at the same time so highly entertaining and attractive
that men should unconsciously be receiving good and wholesome
doctrines, whilst they sought merely to amuse themselves?
There is no question that such things were to him true recreation
and delight. Sports and pastimes have for one object
" to drive away the heavy thoughts of care, " and to refresh the
spirits dulled by overwork, and by harping on one string.
Idleness,
especially enforced idleness, is no rest to such a mind as
Bacon's; and we know that he was always weariest and least
well in " the dead long vacation. " So we are sure that he often
exclaimed, like Theseus, in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream:
"Come, now; what masques, what dances shall we have,
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bedtime ?
Where is our usual manager of mirth ?
What revels are in hand ? Is there no play
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour }
Say, what abridgment have you for this evening?
What masque ? what music ? How shall we beguile
The lazy time, if not with some delight ?
Like Theseus and his friends, he finds little satisfaction in
the performance of the ancient play which is proposed, and