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Prose

Notes Compare Omar Khayham on the world as a theatre by candle-light : “For in and out, above, about,
below,’ Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow Show,Play’d in a box whose candle is the sun,
Round which we phantom figures come and go!”

Bacon continues,
“Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to
the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth
ever add pleasure.”
Observe the apology for poetical fiction in this passage, which presently we find repeated with
something of an explanation:
“One of the Fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum (the wine of the devils),because
it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie.”
That is to say, poetical fiction or invention, although it obscures truth, or veils it, is not all falsehood,
and all parabolical poetry shadows, under tropes of similitude’s, a concealed meaning of truth. It
would seem, then, that this essay Of Truth is a sort of apology for the poetical veil, or masque of
Truth, upon the score of man’s dislike, or incapability, of receiving unadulterated truth itself?
Bacon uses the expression “I cannot tell” to excuse himself explanation of the world’s love of lies.
In the play of Richard III the same phrase in introduced, together with what would seem to answer
the question in context with it:— “I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad That wrens may prey where
eagles dare not perch.” (I. 3).
Christ exclaimed “That the world cannot receive truth,” and Bacon implies the same thing, and he
then proceeds to explain that the disguises and actings of the world’s stage are better adapted,
than the searchlight of open daylight, for the half-lights of the theatre. If the reader will turn to the
essay entitled Of Masques and Triumphs, he will find complete proof that this is an allusion to the
stage in the essay Of Truth. And it would seem as if there existed some sort of antithesis between
these two essays, i.e., the world’s love of pleasure is so great, “Satis alter alteri magnum theatrum
sumus” (We are sufficently the great theatre of each other),—”All the world’s a stage, and all the
men and women merely players,” —and acting has little consonance with truth. Observe, too, in
both essays there is the same allusion to candle-light.
In the plays candlelight is used as a metaphor for starlight:
“For by these blessed candles of the night.” (Merchant of Venice, V.i). “There’s husbandry in
heaven; Their candles are all out.” (Macbeth II. i). Night’s candles are burnt out.” (Romeo and Juliet
III.5). See Sonnet 21, “As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.”
This point seems to me very pertinent to the entire subject of the essay (and authorship of the
plays), and is a hint of the very first importance as to whether Bacon wore a mask known as
Shakespeare. But the introduction of this subject, in connection with poetry, and with an apology
for the poets’ “shadow of a lie,” on account of the pleasure afforded by the dainty shows of the
theatre, seen by candlelight, is a hint that only the most obstinately blind or obtuse person can
decline to perceive. The first Masque, in England, was held at Greenwhich Palace (where King
Henry the Eighth was born), “the first disguise( in the year 1513, on the day of the Epiphany), after
the manner of Italy called a Masque, a thing not seen afore in England.” In Love’s Labour Lost we
have a masque introduced, and also scene in King Henry the Eighth where the royal dancers are
masked. Triumphs were processional pageants, or shows by Torchlight. Bacon is telling us that
man does not care about abstract truth, and when he says men do not care for open daylight, he
is speaking very truly. For he points out that “the archflatterer with whom all the petty flatterers
have intelligence, is a man’s self” (essay Of Love ). And in this essay of Truth :
“A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of
men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the

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