Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 139
His object, evidently, is to get the young doctor of law (probably
a member of his secret society) out of the difficulties into
which he had fallen through his complicity in the publication of
a political squib against tyranny, which Bacon was well aware
that Dr. Hayward did not write.
Does no one think it strauge that Francis Bacon should have
told the Queen that the finest passages in Richard II. are taken
from Cornelius Tacitus and translated into Euglish in that text,
and yet that no commentator on Shakespeare, no student of Tacitus,
should have been at the paius of pointing out these passages?
They must be cleverly used, to be so indistinguishable to these
learned readers, for they are there.
And is it to be taken as a mere matter of course that Bacon,
who as a rule mentions himself so little, should have recorded
this scene and his own speech amongst his collection of witty
sayings, when that speech (which is not very witty) would have
had no point if it had not been true?
And we ask again, Did it not appear strange to Queen Elizabeth
that Bacon should shew such intimate knowledge of the
sources from which some of the chief passages in Richard II.
were derived— a knowledge beyond any which has been displayed
by the most learned and authentic Shakespeare societies
which have existed until now?
These episodes about Dr. Hayward's tract and the play of
Richard II. incline us to a conviction, which is strengthened by
other evidence, that Queen Elizabeth had a very shrewd suspicion,
if not an absolute knowledge, that Francis Bacon was intimately
connected with the revival of the stage in her times.
Sometimes it almost seems as if she had a still deeper acquaintance
with the aims and objects of his life; that sometimes she
disapproved, and was only kept from venting upon him all the
vials of her wrath, first by her strong esteem and regard for his
father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and secondly, by her admiration of
Francis Bacon himself.
It seems not impossible that the Queen's
reverence for Sir Nicholas may have been increased by her
knowledge of his schemes for the revival of learning, and she
may have known, probably did know, that it was the aim of the