ABSTRACT
Leaving aside the chimeras of the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy, the present essay confines itself to humbler and more accessible questions. Following James Spedding, Bacon's great editor, the Bacon's authorship of parts of three semidramatic 'devices' is accepted by everyone. In 1592 he wrote, on behalf of Essex for presentation before Queen Elizabeth, a speech "In Praise of Knowledge" and another "In Praise of the Queen." In comparing poetry with history, under the heading of narrative poetry, Bacon is most struck by the fictional, picture-building capacity of poetry to create human beings and human worlds more pleasing than those which actually exist. The theatrical imagination was not only deceptive but also proud and irreligious when operating illegitimately in the sphere of natural science. From this point of view it is understandable why Bacon's estimate of the imagination, with its outgrowths in narrative poetry and the stage, remained always grudging, suspicious, and condescending.
