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Unit 5: Francis Bacon - Of Truth: Critical Analysis

like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things full of melancholy Notes
and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?”
This is as much as to say, that most men “walk in a vain show,” and are actors, i.e., play up rather
to the parts they imagine they possess, than are what they really are by nature. In the essay Of
Love, Bacon says
“It is a poor saying of Epicurus, “We are a sufficiently great theatre to each other “. That Bacon
should introduce this saying of Seneca (to be found in his Epistles, Moral I., 17) in the essay Of
Love is not strange. For Bacon knew that love is one of the greatest of actors (and cause of acting)
in life, as well as the motive for stage comedies in the theatre. He writes, “The stage is more
beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever a matter of Comedies, and
now and then of tragedies. It is strange to note the excess of this passion; and how it braves the
nature and value of things, that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but
love.”
The ancients painted Cupid blind, because people in love are deprived of reason and sound
judgment, and see everything by a candlelight of glamour an illusion, where all is appearance, as
in a theatre. The lover conceals his real character, and pretends to all sorts of parts which he plays
in order to attract the one beloved, just, as in natural selection, we find at the courting season, male
birds spreading their peacock feathers to attract the female, that is to say, this passion consists of
every sort of exaggeration both in action and in speech, which, to the onlooker, is ever a source of
amusement and comedy because of its divagation from all semblance of truth. Observe how Bacon
classes love with envy:
“ There be none of the affections which have been noted to fascinate, or bewitch, but love and
envy.” He then makes this profound observation of envy, which is equally applicable to love :
“ A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious..... therefore it must needs be, that he
taketh a kind of play pleasure in looking upon the fortunes of others.” —essay Of Envy
This is written in the spirit of the text already quoted from Bacon, “We are a sufficiently great
theatre, one to the other.”
That is to say, all life is a theatre, and it may be noted, that love, of all passions, is the one that
attracts most attention from those within the circle, or theatre of its influence. People of all classes
are everlastingly watching it, or contemplating it, or talking about it. For it brings with it other
passions into play, such as envy, or jealousy, and often ends in the tragedies we read every day in
the papers. In the 1st Book of the Advancement of Learning, Bacon once more quotes this saying
with an apology which would seem to be pointed at himself:—
“Another fault incident commonly to learned men, which may be more probably defended than
truly denied, is that they fail sometimes in applying themselves to particular persons, which want
of exact application ariseth from two causes— the one, because the largeness of their mind can
hardly confine itself to dwell in the exquisite observation or examination of the nature and customs
of one person; for it is a speech for a lover, and not for a wise man. We are sufficiently a great
theatre to each other”.
It is very possible Bacon was thinking of Seneca, the dramatist, from whom he quotes this Latin
saying ( to whom he compares himself in the De Augmentis of 1623), particularly as he mentions
him in the preceding paragraph but one. But this passage appears as an apology written for Bacon
himself, who was a learned man after the pattern of Demosthenes and Cicero, whom he has just
previously cited. He is covertly telling us he is a lover of the theatre—of the contemplation of life
as a stage, but that he is not wise to tell us so. In the 2nd book of the Advancement of Learning he
again introduces some part of the above passage, and this time directly pointed at himself :
“My hope is that, if my extreme love to learning carry me too far, I may obtain the excuse of
affection; for that it is not granted to man to love and be wise” (p.75 2nd book Advancement).

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