The report was that they should then [have] had their
ears cut and noses. After their delivery, he banqueted all his friends;
there was Camden, Selden, and others; at the midst of the feast his old
Mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the
sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his
drinke, which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no
churle, she told, she was minded first to have drunk of it herself."
This was in 1605, and it is a strange and grim illustration of the
dangers that beset men in the Highway of Letters.
It was necessary for Bacon to write under pseudonyms to conceal his
identity, but he intended that at some time posterity should do him
justice and it was for this purpose that, among the numerous clues he
supplied to reveal himself he wrote "The Tempest" in its present form,
which Emile Montegut writing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in 1865
declared to be the author's literary Testament.
The Island is the Stage. Prospero the prime Duke, the great
Magician, represents the Mighty Author who says "my brother ...
called Anthonio who next thyself of all the world I lov'd" .
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