Upon this popular romance Greene, one of the best of the second-class Elizabethan dramatists, founded his rattling comedy, entitled ‘The Historye of Fryer Bacon and Fryer Bungay,’ which was written, it would seem, in 1589, first acted about 1592, and published in 1594. He does not servilely follow the old story-book, but introduces an under-plot of his own, in which is shown the love of Prince Edward for Margaret, the ‘Fair Maid of Fressingfield,’ whom the Prince finally surrenders to the man she loves, his favourite and friend, Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.
GREENE’S COMEDY.
In Scene I., which takes place near Framlingham, in Suffolk, we find Prince Edward eloquently expatiating on the charms of the Fair Maid to an audience of his courtiers, one of whom advises him, if he would prove successful in his suit, to seek the assistance of Friar Bacon, a ‘brave necromancer,’ who ‘can make women of devils, and juggle cats into coster-mongers.’6 The Prince acts upon this advice.
Scene II. introduces us to Friar Bacon’s cell at Brasenose College, Oxford (an obvious anachronism, as the college was not founded until long after Bacon’s time). Enter Bacon and his poor scholar, Miles, with books under his arm; also three doctors of Oxford: Burden, Mason, and Clement.
Bacon. Miles, where are you?
Miles. Hic sum, doctissime et reverendissime Doctor. (Here I am, most learned and reverend Doctor.)
Bacon. Attulisti nostros libros meos de necromantia? (Hast thou brought my books of necromancy?)
Miles. Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare libros in unum! (See how good and how pleasant it is to dwell among books together!)
Bacon. Now, masters of our academic state
That rule in Oxford, viceroys in your place,
Whose heads contain maps of the liberal arts,
Spending your time in depths of learnèd skill,
Why flock you thus to Bacon’s secret cell,
A friar newly stalled in Brazen-nose?
Say what’s your mind, that I may make reply.
Burden. Bacon, we hear that long we have suspect,
That thou art read in Magic’s mystery:
In pyromancy,7 to divine by flames; To tell by hydromancy, ebbs and tides; By aeromancy to discover doubts,— To plain out questions, as Apollo did.
Bacon. Well, Master Burden, what of all this?
Miles. Marry, sir, he doth but fulfil, by rehearsing of these names, the fable of the ‘Fox and the Grapes’: that which is above us pertains nothing to us.
Burd. I tell thee, Bacon, Oxford makes report,
Nay, England, and the Court of Henry says
Thou’rt making of a Brazen Head by art,
Which shall unfold strange doubts and aphorisms,
And read a lecture in philosophy:
And, by the help of devils and ghastly fiends,
Thou mean’st, ere many years or days be past,
To compass England with a wall of brass.
Bacon. And what of this?
Miles. What of this, master! why, he doth speak mystically; for he knows, if your skill fail to make a Brazen Head, yet Master Waters’ strong ale will fit his time to make him have a copper nose....
Bacon. Seeing you come as friends unto the friar,
Resolve you, doctors, Bacon can by books
Make storming Boreas thunder from his cave,
And dim fair Luna to a dark eclipse.
The great arch-ruler, potentate of hell,
Tumbles when Bacon bids him, or his fiends
Bow to the force of his pentageron.8 ... I have contrived and framed a head of brass (I made Belcephon hammer out the stuff), And that by art shall read philosophy: And I will strengthen England by my skill, That if ten Cæsars lived and reigned in Rome, With all the legions Europe doth contain, They should not touch a grass of English ground: The work that Ninus reared at Babylon, The brazen walls framed by Semiramis, Carved out like to the portal of the sun, Shall not be such as rings the English strand From Dover to the market-place of Rye.
In this patriotic resolution of the potent friar the reader will trace the influence of the national enthusiasm awakened, only a few years before Greene’s comedy was written and produced, by the menace of the Spanish Armada.
It is unnecessary to quote the remainder of this scene, in which Bacon proves his magical skill at the expense of the jealous Burden. Scene III. passes at Harleston Fair, and introduces Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, disguised as a rustic, and the comely Margaret. In Scene IV., at Hampton Court, Henry III. receives Elinor of Castile, who is betrothed to his son, Prince Edward, and arranges with her father, the Emperor, a competition between the great German magician, Jaques Vandermast, and Friar Bacon, ‘England’s only flower.’ In Scene V. we pass on to Oxford, where some comic incidents occur between Prince Edward (in disguise) and his courtiers; and in Scene VI. to Friar Bacon’s cell, where the friar shows the Prince in his ‘glass prospective,’ or magic mirror, the figures of Margaret, Friar Bungay, and Earl Lacy, and reveals the progress of Lacy’s suit to the rustic beauty. Bacon summons Bungay to Oxford—straddling on a devil’s back—and the scene then changes to the Regent-house, and degenerates into the rudest farce. At Fressingfield, in Scene VIII., we find Prince Edward threatening to slay Earl Lacy unless he gives up to him the Fair Maid of Fressingfield; but, after a struggle, his better nature prevails, and he retires from his suit, leaving Margaret to become the Countess of Lincoln. Scene IX. carries us back to Oxford, where Henry III., the Emperor, and a goodly company have assembled to witness the trial of skill between the English and the German magicians—the first international competition on record!—in which, of course, Vandermast is put to ridicule.
Passing over Scene X. as unimportant, we return, in Scene XI., to Bacon’s cell, where the great magician is lying on his bed, with a white wand in one hand, a book in the other, and beside him a lighted lamp. The Brazen Head