A large part of the plot of the "Comedy of Errors" was drawn from the _Menæchmi_ of Plautus, a play which Bacon frequently quotes. On the supposition that Shakspeare was unacquainted with it, we easily account for his knowledge of the plot. A previous play, called the "Historie of Error," acted in 1577, was derived from the same comedy of Plautus; and William Warner's translation of it was freely handed about in manuscript for some time before the appearance of the "Comedy of Errors," though it was not entered at Stationers Hall till June, 1594.[15]
There is a curious parallelism between the fourth scene of Act iv. of the "Winter's Tale," where Perdita shows her tender knowledge of flowers, and Bacon's Essay on Gardens which was not printed till 1625. So it appears that both men were acquainted with the same facts concerning the succession of flowers through the months of the year. And there is nothing strange in that; for the flowers took their same times to bloom for Shakspeare in Stratford as they did for Bacon near London, or in the retreats of Gorhambury. But it is only enough to contrast the exquisite lines of Perdita with Bacon's cataloguing prose, in which not one epithet save "pale" and "yellow" appears, to feel quite sure that the flowers breathed no charm into Bacon's fancy.
"O Proserpina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's wagon! daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phœbus in his strength."
If precious articles at public vendue--Gobelins, rare Palissys, Majolicas, and Sèvres ware--happen to tally with an auctioneer's list of the sale, does it seem quite credible that they were all the production of the auctioneer? "Merciful, wonder-making Heaven!" What a myriad-minded auctioneer!
Indeed, does any one dare to say that Shakspeare and Bacon did not compare notes upon many subjects? Many of the reputed parallelisms are indirect traces of such an intercourse; and it is not a sufficient objection that Shakspeare is nowhere mentioned by Bacon. Neither are Spenser and Marlowe; and we know that he was acquainted with Ben Jonson. Did Ben Jonson and Shakspeare never go to Gray's Inn together? Shakspeare helped Johnson to write his tragedy of "Sejanus;" and the latter was frequently with Bacon during the period of composition? I love to think, as it cannot be disproved, that Shakspeare met high themes of speculation, Nature's curious secrets, and choice allusions of learning, amid the books and apparatus of the philosopher, where problems dear to both these men were discussed. Such an intercourse as this, which varied his close companionship with Essex and Southampton, would be quite sufficient to account for the coincidences which support the Baconian theory: there is, for instance, the passage in "Troilus and Cressida" that puts into Hector's mouth a queer bit of didactic anachronism. Reproving Paris and Troilus, he says,--