Note 2 — SHAKESPEARE—A THEORY

From Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie (of which more hereafter) we learn that he was in the secret of some “Queis meliore luto finxit præcordia Titan, and who are better content to suppress the outflowing of their wit than by publishing it to be accounted knights of the same order” as those “servile wits who think it enough to be rewarded of the printer.” Similarly Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), writes: “I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be publisht without their names to it.” The Arte of English Poesie was dedicated to Bacon’s uncle and quasi guardian, Lord Burleigh. In this connexion, a saying ascribed to Edmund Waller is worth notice: “Sidney and Bacon were nightingales who sang only in the spring, it was the diversion of their youth.”