King James I and the Queen of Sheba

WILLIAM TATE

King James I and the Queen ofSheba

ear the beginning ofhis funeral sermon for KingJames I, Great Brituins Sulornon ( I 625), Bishop John Williams imposes on his hearers a significant bit ofrole-playing. Alluding to the Queen

ofSheba’s visit to Solomon in I Kings 10, he assigns his audience the part of the Queen. The passage comes right at the end of Williams’ intro- ductory remarks and summarizes the purpose of the whole sermon; he expects his hearers to stay in character throughout: “by the time I haue plated ouer the parts ofthis Text with the particulars ofthe Application, you that heare me this day, shall haue that happinesse of the Queene of the South, which is not onely to haue read in a Booke, but withall to haue seene with your eies, and to haue heard with your eares all the rarities, and perfections of the wise Kmg Salomon” (p. 8). Williams’ stage management dictates the appropriate audience response to his sermon. His audience should recognize in James another Solomon.

In at least one respect the particular role and scene he asks them to play is the most fitting he could have chosen. King James himself had provided the hint near the beginning of his English reign. In Basitikon Doron, King James recommends to his heir, “make your Court and companie to bee a patterne of godlinesse and all honest vertues.”’ James continues to offer Prince Henry his best fatherly platitudes. Their ba- nality is partially mitigated, perhaps, by the recollection that James is a king, addressing a prince whose behavior may be expected to set trends for an entire realm.

In the course of recommending order, James offers a biblical pattern for Henry to follow: “And shortly, maintaine peace in your Court, bannish envie, cherish modestie, bannish deboshed insolence, foster

I . f i e Political Work oflames I , ed. Charles H. McIlwain (Cambridge, MA, 1918; rpt. New York 1965) P. 33-

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humilitie, and represse pride: setting downe such a comely and honourable order in all the pointes of your service; that when strangers [i.e., foreigners] shall visite your Court, they may with the Queene of Sheba, admire your wisedome in the glorie of your house, and comely order among your servants” (McIlwain, p. 33) . King James’s allusion to the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon handily expresses James’s aspirations for his own court. Although James actually did little to turn his idealism into reality, his ideals themselves were widely known. Basilikon Doron had been published in a s m a l l first edition in I 599. James’s succession in 1603, however, created a demand for the book among his new subjects, and several editions came out in the first year of his reign (one in Edinburgh, two in London); furthermore, several Latin editions were printed in 1603 and 1604.~ James’s interest in the visit of Sheba must have been well known from the very beginning of his English tenure. It is no surprise that aspirants to his favor cultivated the seed-story he offered them, or that Bishop Williams appeals to the story again at the end ofthe reign. In effect, James had anticipated Williams by asking not only his subjects but also foreign visitors to his court to play the Queen’s part.

At least two questions are raised by the King’s use of the story. Various answers to these questions shaped the various emphases an author or artist might give to the story in retelling it. First, James’s ideal for the appearance of his court was in some sense Solomonic. H e implies orderliness as the most important feature of Solomon’s court, but his abstractions leave ample scope for the development of other features. For example, Francis Bacon would spend considerable effort trying to convince James that a Solomonic court ought to be character- ized by the pursuit of knowledge.

The second question raised by the King’s allusion to the story concerns how the appearance of the court was expected to impress foreign visit0rs.j What would it take to impress such visitors? James stresses order, but the story *more obviously suggests magnificence and even extravagance. His ideal raises practical questions about his foreign pol- icy that also affect the shape of retelling of the story. Like many Sol- omonic episodes, therefore, the story of the Queen of Sheba lent itself

2. For a summary ofthe bibliography, see Mcllwain, cixi; see also Jenny Wormald, “James VI and I, Basilikon Doron and 7’he Trew Law $Free Monarchies: The Scottish context and the English translation,” in T h e Mental World ofrheJacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge, Eng., 1991) pp. 36-54. esp. pp. 50-52.

3 . Williams of course chooses not to limit the significance ofthe story to foreigners.

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to political uses in early seventeenth-century England.4 Presented tact- fully it might, by complimenting the King for resembling Solomon or urging him to be more like Solomon, either justiG or seek to correct the King’s policies and practices, both at home and abroad. Two particular versions of the story are well worth considering as examples. The first, a masque performed early in the reign, suggests something of the range ofmeanings it was possible to give the story, from the extravagant compliment of the masque itself to the satire that is evident in the contemporary account through which we know of the masque. A second version of the story, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, reveals the hrther possibilities of the story as a means of appeal to the King in support of a specific political and social agenda. A detailed examination of the first version wdl help clarifj the tradition that shapes Bacon’s use of the story in his own version. Bacon ultimately departs from the tradition in compliance with the demands made by his own priorities. His departures, however, respond to problems evidently inherent in the iconography even in the earlier account. Taken together the two versions of the story suggest a greater complexity in King James’s favor- ite icon than has hitherto been acknowledged. More than just complimentary superficialities, comparisons associating James with Solomon might either encourage virtue or excuse vice, strengthen the King’s position, or subvert it.

I1 Enter the Queen of Sheba

Sometime between July 24 and July 29, 1606, the poet and satirist Sir John Harington witnessed a masque presented before King James and his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark. The idea for the masque

4. For instance, the story called “The Judgment of Solomon” was the basis for the first pageant that met King James when he officially entered Edinburgh as James VI in 1578 and would later (in the 1630s) provide the basis for one of Rubens’ depictions ofJames on the Whitehall Banqueting House ceiling. Both the Lord Keeper, Bishop John Williams, and John Donne based funeral sermons for King James on incidents in the life of Solomon. Although many students of the period mention the association between James and Solomon, there has never been a thorough study of the uses of Solomonic iconography within Jacobean court culture. The importance ofthe iconography has been noticed in passing by Steven N. Zwicker, Dryden’s Political Poetry (Providence, 1972) pp. 36-37; by Jonathan Goldberg,]ames I and the Politics ofhrerafure (Baltimore, 1983) pp. 40-42; and by R. Malcolm Smuts, Courr Culture and the Origim . /a Royalist Tradition in Early Sfuart England (Philadelphia, 1987) p. 25, to mentlon only a few exampies. The most suggestive study to date is Roy Strong’s Brittania Triumpham (New York, 1980); cf. Strong, Splendor ar Courr (Boston, 1973) pp. 58-59.

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probably came from the King’s allusion to the story in Budikon Dorun. The masque was one element in the lavish entertainment for the two monarchs provided by Robert Cecil at Theobalds, the magnificent estate which Cecil would give to James in the following year. The text of the masque has not survived, so we are fortunate in having Haring- ton’s fairly detailed account, written in a letter to William Barlow a few days after the performance of the masque. Harington’s letter makes possible a substantial interpretation of the event’s intended significance. Although the letter is well known, critics who mention it generally use it to illustrate the moral inadequacies ofthe Jacobean court. By 1900 the Dictionary of National Biography could describe this letter as “the stock quotation for the intemperance ofthe court ofJames I.”5 More recently, Patrick Grant mentions the letter to prove “that courtly appropriations of the masque were not always high-minded”; Barbara Kiefer Lewalski quotes from it to support her assertion that Harington “observed that James’s court was increasingly a locus of scandal, riot and debauchery”; and Leah S . Marcus cites the letter to illustrate James’s “seemingly ungovernable appetite for excess.”6 Harington’s ironic account of the masque invites this focus on the court’s follies, but if the actual performance was disastrous, it nevertheless managed to represent, at least in caricature, a vision of Solomonic empire which James took very se- riously. Linda Levy Peck has recently summarized the Jacobean ideal of empire as combining union ofthe kingdoms at home with a developing English colonial enterprise. “In the Jacobean era,” she says, “new attitudes toward empire were spelled out which shaped the colonization of Ireland and laid the basis for English expansion across the Atlanti~.”~

s. In the entry on Haringon. 6. Patrick Grant, Literature and the Discovery ofMethod in the Englith Renaissance (Athens, GA,

1985) pp. 75 and 170-71. n. 5s; Barbara Lewalsh, Writing Women injocobean England (Cam- bridge, MA, 1993) pp. 15-16 and 328, n. 2; Leah s. Marcus, 7 h e Politics ofMirth (Chicago, 1986) pp. 10 and 268, n. I S . It is not quite fair to treat the events he describes as typical, since Harington calls them atypical: “from the day [the Danish King] did come . . . I have been well nigh overwhelmed with carousal. . . . I think the Dane hath strangely wrought on our good Engllsh nobles; for those whom I never could get to taste good hquor. now follow the fashlon, and wallow in beastly delights,” and so on. Harington regarded English behavior on this occasion as exceptional. His descripaon cemnly foreshadows later developments, however.

7. “The Mental World of the Jacobean Court: an Introduction,” in The Mental World ofthe jacobean Court, ed. Peck. As Peck indicates, the importance of the Roman empire as a model for the Jacobean imperial vision is a major focus ofJonathan Goldberg’sjames I and the Politiu- of Literature @. 8). My study is meant in part to qualifjr Goldberg’s by pointing out the similar importance of Solomon’s empire as a model.

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James’s desire for a union of the British Isles and his desire for American gold express the same attitude, and as a matter of convenience I will refer to these complementary notions collectively as “imperial.” Both the desire for union and colonial ambition mark the occasion of the masque, which adds a third element to the imperial vision, James’s desire for European influence. Although it does not obviously represent the desire to unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland, the goal of union provides part of the setting for the masque. Furthermore, the masque enacts a desire for colonial trade influence that parallels James’s desire for political influence on the European continent, and its symbolic actions make use of the products of such trade.

Harington’s description of the masque clearly indicates two of the three factors of Jacobean imperialistic idealism in the performance and setting of the masque. He begins with the central premise of the masque :

One day, a great feast was held, and, after dinner, the representation of Sol- omon his Temple and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made, before their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others.*-But, alass! as all earthly things do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so did prove our presentment hereof. The Lady who d d play the Queens part, d d carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties; but, forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, tho I rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His Majesty then got up and woud dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and humbled himselfbefore her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a bed of state; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters.’

Harington’s irony is delightful and wittily apt, as when he makes this debacle illustrate the Solomonic theme of Ecclesiastes: “all earthly things do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment.” The humor ofhis account and the personal failings of the masquers do not quite obscure, however, the serious iconography of the masque. His explanation that the

8. One ofthe “others” may have been Inigo Jones, who had formerly served Christian IV in Denmark. Jones was active in English court entertainments as early as 1604. See Antonia Fraser, KingJames n a n d I(New York, 1975) p. IZO.

9. The Letters and Epigrams cf Sir John Harington together with 7 I e Prayse cf Private Life, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (Philadelphia. 1930) p. I 19. Hereafter 1 cite page numbers paren- thetically. I quote extensively for clarity’s sake and because the letter is so entertaining.


King of Denmark “humbled himself before” the lady portraying the Queen of Sheba reveals, in ironic reversal, the concern of the masque with a traditional significance of the story. In the biblical account the Queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon’s greatness and wisdom, comes to see for herself. Although she doubts the veracity of the ac- counts she has received, after meeting Solomon and observing his court and kingdom, she acknowledges his greatness and humbles herself before him: “there was no more spirit in her,” we are told (I Kings 1 0 . 5 ) . ’ O

The story provides a perfect vehicle for any tactful author who finds it necessary to compliment two monarchs. The visiting monarch, in the role of the Queen of Sheba, may be associated with the splendor and wisdom of that great queen, who was wealthy enough to give Solomon one of the richest gifts he ever received (I Kings 10.10) and who had enough wisdom of her own to recognize Solomon’s. One’s own monarch, on the other hand, may be associated with Solomon (receiving a home court advantage, so to speak) in his superior splendor and wisdom: all kings are equal, but some kings are more equal than others. With reference to her 1565 visit to Elizabeth, James Bell compares Princess Cecilia of Sweden with “the Quene of Saba . . . for that (enflamed w[i]th Love of Wisdome), She travailed in comparison a shorte journeye to visytte the Courte of Salomon, there to enjoye the presence of so wyse a Kynge.”” During her visit, Princess Cecilia accompanied Elizabeth to a performance of Supientia Solomonis put on by the Westminster School. As Ruth H. Blackburn points out, the play complimented Cecilia for coming, as well as complimenting Elizabeth‘s wisdom.” Although Harington does not make the point, we may reasonably assume that the Theobalds masque was meant to offer similar compliments to the kings of Denmark and England forty years later. Christian IV, implicitly represented by the Queen of Sheba, was meant to be complimented as a wise and wealthy visitor. James himself repre-

10. Harington’s remark that the “Queen” “fell at his feet” also reflects her appropriate posture, according to the story.

I I . Cited by John N. Kmg, Tudor Royal Iconography, Princeton Essays on the Arts (Princeton, 1989) p. 254. King also describes a Latin play based on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon and performed before Princess Cecilia and Queen Elizabeth. The play draws on the ‘Judgment of Solomon” story and mentions Solomon’s building ofthe Temple @. 255) .

12. For a fuller descrlption of the play, including its history, see Ruth Blackburn, Biblical Drama Under the Tudors (The Hague, 1971) pp. 142-45. Perhaps following Bell, Blackburn notices that “the fact that the Queen of Sheba had taken a long and arduous journey to visit Solomon could be turned into a graceful allusion to Princess Cecilia” (p. 143).

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sents S o l ~ m o n , ’ ~ the magnanimous and condescending host. The biblical story emphasizes the international fame of Solomon; Solomon’s reputation motivated the Queen’s visit. The story thereby supports the imperial theme already suggested by James’s remarks in Basilikon Dorm and implies the importance of his influence for European politics. The submission of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon suggests that, as a representative of Europe, King Christian acknowledges James’s place as a leader to Europe. Insofar as the Queen of Sheba in the masque symbolically represents the King of Denmark, the masque attributes to King Christian the motives of that queen. In the world of the masque he has not come to visit family but to pay homage, even tribute.

If this tribute is merely nominal and symbolic, the actual tribute brought by the actress representing the Queen-including in particular imported spices-suggests another kind of foreign influence, influence through exploration, colonization, and trade. The gift of spice Haring- ton notices is also the most important gift mentioned in the biblical source; we are told that “there came no more such abundance ofspices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon” (I Kings 10.10).

In Jacobean England spice was a luxury of the wealthy and, as Patricia Fumerton recently has shown, formed a significant part of court culture. Consumption of spices followed the main meal, most often in the separated space of a banqueting house, and frequently in association with a masque or other entertainment. Spice was thus a part ofwhat set the court apart from the populace, an edible signifier of status. Haring- ton notes that the Theobalds masque took place “after dinner,” and its action incorporated the actual service of after-dinner confections to the monarchs.

Because of the difficulty involved in acquiring spice, its consumption furthermore suggested e~travagance.’~ Extravagant consumption in court festival was meant to impress, and as we have seen, the very point James saw in the visit of the Queen of Sheba was that visitors should be impressed. The example of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon

13 . If the point needs to be proved, I quote below the section of the masque in which “Victory” offers James a sword. This symbolic action derives fiom the ‘ludgment of Solomon” story, like the first pageant that ever involved James, and places James, rather than some other actor, In the role of Solomon.

14. Fumerton’s interesting and provocative account of the relauonship bemeen spices, masques and the attitudes of the Jacobean court, appears in her CuItural Aesthetics: Renaissance Lirerurure and the Practice ofSociul Ornament (Chicago, 1991) pp. I I 1-67. Fumerton mentions the Theobalds masque on page 13y.


tended to justi6 such impressive extravagance. In addition, the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba tended to justifjr widespread trade. Its context treats her as only one specific example of Solomon’s foreign influence. In the verses just before she is mentioned, we are told that Solomon’s ships brought back from Ophir “four hundred and twenty talents” of gold (I Kings 9.27-28).j5 Near the end of her visit we are told that the same navy “that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones”; Solomon used these trees to make the “pillars for the house of the Lord” (I Kings I 0. I I - 12). The next verse describes the Queen of Sheba’s departure, and the rest of the chapter catalogs Solomon’s wealth and power. The account thus frames and is framed by examples that glorifjr foreign exploration and trade,I6 and that associate this trade with the Queen’s visit and with the construction and furnishing of Solomon’s temple.

The story of the Queen of Sheba makes it clear that Solomon’s international influence is spiritual as well as material.” Her visit to Solomon was traditionally accepted as indicative of the victory of true

I S . The hope ofdiscovering Ophir seems to have provided a serious motive for New World exploration, although some were apparently skeptical. Stephen Greenblatt records the interesting claim that “The discoverer of these islands named them the Isles of Solomon, to the end that the Spaniards supposing them to be those Isles fiom whence Solomon fetched Gold to adorne the Temple at Jerusalem, might be the more desirous to goe and inhabit the same” (Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purrhas His Pilgrimes, 20 vols. (Glasgow, 1905). xii, p. 292; in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder ofthe New World [Chicago, 19911, p. 178, n. go), Avihu Zakai notes that Purchas makes a typologcal connection between “the Enghsh discoveries in the New World [and] ‘Solomon’s Discoveries.’ ” Enghsh voyagers were the “Navie of Solomon,” gathering gold from “Ophir” in preparation for “the building of that Temple in the new Jerusalem” (Purchas, i, pp. 4-14; cited in Exile and Kingdom: History and apocalypse in the Puritan migration to America (Cambridge, 1992) p. 85.

16. Joseph Hall makes use of the Renaissance debate concerning the location of Ophir to satirize the European drive to exploration in his Mundus Alter et Idem. He has Bemaldus say: “Nothing is more convincing to me than that some part of this western land was that golden Ophir which they say was once explored by the sailing fleet of Solomon and Hiram in a three- year voyage. And truly, five conflicting opinions appear among the authors.” Beroaldus goes on to name the relevant authors and explain the various opinions, insisnng that the view which places Ophir in the new world must be correct. Another World and Yet the Same: BishopJoseph Hall‘s Mundus Alter et Idem, tr. and ed. John MiUar Wands (New Haven, 1981) pp. 14-16.

17. Along the same lines, Don Cameron M e n notes that in 1697 Paul Stockmann explained similarities between the Bible and the belie& of inhabitants of the New World as “the obvious results of Solomon’s voyages to Ophir, which spread Jewish doctrine and rites throughout the world,” Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovety of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Balumore, 1970) p. 67, n. 44. Here, as in the Theobalds masque, commerce and proselytizing each imply the other.

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religion. Miraculously (as in the world of the Jacobean masque) the mere presence of the divinely appointed monarch establishes truth. More precisely, as a result of the English Reformation the story had been adapted to specifically Protestant allegorizing. As John N. King explains, “the Queen ofSheba is a traditional type for the church.” King argues that in the Holbein portrait of Henry VIII as Solomon, “her kneeling homage and submission to an omnicompetent monarch carry every suggestion that the miniature is designed to commemorate the recent submission ofthe Church ofEngland to Henry as the head ofthe church.” (p. 81). &ng goes on to point out the similarity in composi- tion between this portrait and Holbein’s engraving of Henry VIII as the ideal Protestant monarch for the title page of the Coverdale Bible.’* In the Coverdale engraving Henry exercises his authority as head of the church by distributing the Bible in the vernacular. The suggestion that the miniature also visually alludes to Henry’s role in distributing Scrip- ture does not seem at all unlikely in light of the Geneva Bible gloss on the Queen of Sheba’s exclamation concerning the happiness of Sol- omon’s servants: “Much more happie are they, which heare the wisdome of God reveiled in his worde.”l9

At least some ofJames’s subjects saw in him a similar hero of Protes- tantism, regarding his writings against the Pope’s authority as both a defense of Protestantism and a fulfillment of his role as head of the English Church. Richard Crakanthorpe, for example, accepts James’s divine right doctrine as an expression of scriptural truth. His sermon on the visit of the Queen of Sheba describes King James as “indued with . . . Diuine and Heauenly wisedome . . . to professe, maintaine, and vphold the truth of God, and of his Gospell.” As evidence he points “specially [to] that most learned Apologie, for the Oath of Allegiance against the Popes two Breues, ”*O that is, to an argument in favor of the king’s authority and against the pope’s.

The Holbein miniature shows Henry enthroned on a dais above which hangs a cloth of state; the visiting Queen kneels halfway up the

18. King, pp. 8 1 and 83. King reproduces the portraits on p. 58 (fig. 8) and p. 82 (fig. 18). 19. Cited by King, p. 83. 20. A Sermon at the Solemnizing of the Happie Inauguration of our m o ~ t ararious and Religious

Soueraigne King James. Wherein is man$sfly proved, that the Soueraignty of King3 is immediatlyjom God, andsecond to no aufhon‘ty on Earth whauoeuer(r6og) n.p.; the sermon was originally preached at Paul’s Cross.

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steps that approach the throne. It is exactly this moment in the story that the Theobalds masque re-enacts.21 The Queen’s posture embodies the submission described in the source passage. In the biblical account the Queen of Sheba, having seen Solomon’s wisdom and glory, responds to it by declaring “Blessed be the Lord thy God, which de- lighted in thee,” a sign of her conversion to the faith of Solomon. This response immediately follows an exclamation later borrowed by John Donne for the dedication of Pxeudo-Martyr (1610): “That sayng o f the Queene of Sheba, may bee usurp’d: Happie are thy men, and happie are those thy Servants, which stand before thee alwayes, and heare thy wisedome.”** Donne’s dedication introduces a work which, like Cra- kanthorpe’s sermon, defends the Oath of Allegiance. He similarly por- trays James as the quintessentially Protestant Solomon. Because the text of the Theobalds masque is no longer extant, we cannot verifjr for it a similar significance, but it is certainly plausible that the masque, like Holbein’s miniature of Henry, symbolically acknowledged the monarch as head and defender of the English Church.

The Theobalds masque represented the Jacobean confirmation of true religion in the coming of the three theological virtues, like the Queen of Sheba, to present gifts to the King.23 Ruth Blackburn notes the addition of allegorical characters to the play Supientia Solomonis which was performed for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Cecilia; an adapter introduced “Wisdom, Justice, and Peace” as “aspects of Solo- mon’s character and rule” (pp. 143-44). The Theobalds masque likewise attributes various allegorical virtues, and in particular the three theological virtues, to Solomon/James. In the masque Faith, Hope, and

21. Harington’s remark that the Queen of Sheba tripped on “the steppes arising to the canopy” indicates a similar setting for the Theobalds masque. The dais, the cloth, and Sol- omonic pillars (like those in the Holbern m i a t u r e ) were conventional in painhngs and engrav- ings of the scene.

22. N.p. Donne quotes I Kings 10.8; the phrase I have quoted is the first part of verse 9. James’s allusion to the Queen ofSheba in Basitikon Doron is also specifically to the passage Donne quotes. Cf. John Windet’s title-page quotation of I Kings 10.6 in a work dedicated to King James, Schelomonockarn, or King Solomon his Solace ( I 606).

23. The prermse strongly resembles that of Samuel Daniels’s The Vision of Twelve Goddesses (1604), in which twelve counterparts to the Queen of Sheba bring gifts to the Temple of Peace. The Queen of Sheba is accompanied by women personifylng the theological virtues; the women in Daniels’s Vision personify corresponding classical virtues. Both “Temple” and “Peace” of course have Solomonic associations Barbara Lewalski identifies a subversive potential in the earlier masque’s gift-giving, as relevant for the Theobalds masque as ~t IS for Daniels’s Vision; see her Writing Women in Jacobean England, p. 3 0 .

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Charity, like the Queen ofSheba, were originally meant to present gifts to the monarchs. Their actions would have acknowledged James as the “real” source of virtues, as the summary of Charity’s speech implies. The parallel of their intended actions with those of the Queen of Sheba, however, also identifies the three virtues as an objectification of her experience in meeting Solomon; the meeting produces a conversion which appropriately results in the exercise of these virtues. If the masque, like the Holbein portrait, was meant to enact the submission of the Protestant church to James, then his reign ought to produce these virtues in his kingdom. Harington’s wry allusion to the doctrine of salvation by “faith alone” ironically exposes the actual Protestantism of James’s court, which fulfills Roman Catholic accusations that the Ref- ormation rejection of salvation by works tended to justi$ debauchery.

As Harington describes it, the entrance of the three virtues immediately followed the Queen of Sheba’s part in the masque:

The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down; wine did so occupy their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity: Hope dld assay to speak, but wine renderd her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and hope the King would excuse her brevity: Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not joyned with good works, and left the court in a staggering condition: Charity came to the King’s feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins her sisters had committed; in some sorte she made obeysance and brought giftes, but said she would return home again, as there was no gift which heaven had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Hope and Faith, who were both sick and spewing in the lower hall. (pp. I 19-20)

Ignoring-for the moment-the unintentional slapstick of the actual performance, we realize that the three virtues were meant to approach James and offer him gifts in the same way the Queen had approached him. Harington does not describe the gifts, but it is likely that they included more sugar-and-spice delicacies. Judging from Harington’s summary of Charity’s speech, the virtues attributed their presence to the King’s influence. In his Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer (1619), James would later associate these virtues, as they are associated here, with the peacefulness of his reign as a Solomonic king.

Unfortunately, Harington does not describe the setting of the Theo- balds masque. Since nothing in the action he describes explains why he calls it a “representation of Solomon his Temple,” we can only guess that the text of the masque, or an explanation of it at the time, or some


element of the scenery identified the setting for him. If it was the last of these, there is a good chance that the visual clue was the incorporation into the set of Solomonic pillars. A glance through the drawings of Inigo Jones will illustrate how effectively pillars could be used to establish perspective in a masque scene. James appears on a dais between Solomonic pillars in one of the Rubens portraits on the Whitehall Banqueting House ceiling, and the Holbein portrait of Henry VIII as Solomon shows how pillars might be used along with a raised dais and canopy of state to set apart the space of the king. According to Haring- ton both dais and canopy are features of the Theobalds performance. Whatever it was that identified the setting for Harington, and assuming he correctly identifies that setting, the masque further indicates its own spiritual significance by locating the meeting of the monarchs at the temple. The presence of the king in this setting identifies him as God’s viceregent on earth-he is seated, after all, in the throne room of God- and establishes the temple itself as the center of an empire that is spiritual as well as material. From it Truth and Peace flow out to all nations, and to it returns all the wealth of the world. For James as much as for Solomon the Temple became the symbolic center of an imperial dream. Eventually, both Francis Bacon and Peter Paul Rubens would make of Solomon’s Temple a symbolic center also for major works of art idealizing Jacobean culture.

The remaining details Harington gives of the masque associate the idea of empire with other Solomonic virtues, especially peace. The entrance of Victory indicates the establishment ofthe Solomonic peace, but simultaneously recalls the pageant of “The Judgment of Solomon” which met James on his official entry into Edinburgh as a boy kir1g.~4 We do not know on what basis Harington identified this figure as Victory; the fact that she offers a sword and tries “to make suit to the King” might also be read as the iconography of Solomonic Justice: “Next came Victory, in bright armour, and presented a rich sword to the King, who did not accept it, but put it by with his hand; and, by strange medley ofversification, did endeavour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not triumph long; for, after much lamentable utter-

24. For a description of this pageant see David Calderwood’s The History 4 the Kirk of Scotland, 8 vols. (Edinburgh, 1843) 3: 458; Calderwood’s account derives from a manuscript account of 7%e Historie and Life of KingJames the Sext; the relevant passage was published in Documents Relative to the Reception at Edinburgh ofthe Kings and Queenr of.Scotland (Edinburgh, 1822)pp. 30-31.

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ance, she was led away like a silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber” (p. 120). James’s refusal of the sword symbolically asserts his determination to maintain the role of a peace-maker (his motto, beati pac&, influencing the world of the masque as well as the world of the court).

In this particular the masque contrasts with the pageant that met him on his first entrance into Edinburgh as James VI of Scotland. On that occasion he had accepted a sword in a re-enactment oftheJudgment of Solomon. The masque anticipates, instead, the frontispiece portrait to James’s Works, in which the sword ofJustice appears to one side and behind the throne, rather than in the monarch’s hand (as is standard in the Tudor uses of this icon).25 Victory is followed by Peace herself, the final symbolic person of the masque. Her appearance also anticipates James’s Works, where she appears more amicably than in the masque, on the title page opposite Religion. “Now did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremoste to the King; but I grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her attendants; and, much contrary to her semblance, most rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming” @. 120). The entry of Peace is the last detail Harington mentions of the masque.

Although the details he records clearly reflect the standard iconography of the Solomonic James, Harington’s commentary on the masque severely qualifies the picture of the court the masque itselfwas intended to uphold. The Solomonic iconography of the Theobalds masque, meant to enhance the authority and magnificence of King James, actually has the opposite effect on Harington, making the King seem more threatening than promising. Harington’s humor is a variety of whistling in the dark; the tension he exposes between the positive potential of the icon as an encouragement of royal virtue and its actual negative deployment as a justification for excess demarcates a deeply felt political unease.

Up to this point the tone of Harington’s letter has been that of cheerful gossip, but this tone abruptly disappears in his next sentence, to be replaced with a tone of nostalgia for the reign of Elizabeth. Haring- ton’s approach dso changes from understated humor to direct criticism. Like his epigrams, Harington’s letter combines sophisticated observa-

25. The beati pacijici motto also appears on this portrait. James relates the motto to his Solomonic persona in his Meditation on the Lord’s Prayer. The name Solomon means “peace” (cf. modern Hebrew “shalom”).


tion of human behavior with the moral sensitivity and biting wit of satire.26 Harington clearly shared with Bishop Barlow an establishmen- tarian concern for order which informs his description of the performance.*’ “I have much marvalled at these strange pegentries,” he tells Barlow, “and they do bring to my remembrance what passed of this sort in our Queens days . . . but I neer did see such lack of good order, discretion, and sobriety, as I have now done. I have passed much time in seeing the royal sports of hunting and hawlung, where the manners were such as made me devise the beasts were pursuing the sober cre- ation, and not man in quest of exercise or food” (p. 120). If Haring- ton had read the Basilikon Doron, the “lack of good order” must have seemed to him a stark contrast with the “comely order” of the original Solomon’s household which James had urged on Prince Henry; likewise the riotous behavior he observed must have brought the uncom- fortable memory that, although the King’s advice seems to allow for magnificent display, it explicitly rejects debauchery (“deboshed insolence”). In actual practice, unfortunately, magnificence could shade into excess, and Harington and King James drew the line between the two in different places.

The topsy-turvydom in his description of the hunt suggests a sort of saturnalian misrule which Harington feared as a symptom of actual misrule. His serious political concern reveals itself in references to two political issues with which he closes the letter. The first comes immediately after his description of the hunt. It introduces an issue that involves for Harington both national security and, more importantly, Christian morality. Harington confides in his correspondent: “I will now, in good sooth, declare to you, who will not blab, that the gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads, and we are going on here- abouts, as if the devil was contriving every man should blow up himself, by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time and temperance” (p. 120). For Harington the religious victory that many hoped James’s succession would solidifjl for the English Church-the very victory that some had

26. On Harington’s epigrams see D. H. Craig, Sirjohn Harington, in Twayne’s English Authors Series (Boston, 1985) pp. 84-102.

27. Common interest is most evident in their writings about religious issues. Archbishop Whitgift had appointed Barlow to write the official account of the Hampton Court Con- ference. Barlow also published works defending the English Church against Roman Cathoh- cism. Harington at some point prepared for Prince Henry a manuscript, later published as A bride View ofthe Church ofEngland (1653). which defines a similarly mediating position. See the DNB articles on both men.

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found typologically expressed in the Queen of Sheba story-appeared threatened by the moral unconcern ofJames’s court. What the Papists had failed to defeat by means of the Gunpowder Plot, the defender of Protestantism would destroy by folly?

In its context Harington’s reference to the Plot actually suggests a possible purpose of the masque he describes. Although Harington does not mention it, the allegory of Victory in the Theobalds masque fits perfectly James’s public response towards Roman Catholics after the discovery of the treason and may well have reminded him of the Plot when he prepared to write his letter. In a speech to Parliament concerning the plot, James identifies the dangerous Roman opinion that the people may overthrow a non-Roman Catholic king, but he also points out “that many honest men blinded peradventure with some opinions of Popery, as if they be not sound in the questions of the Real presence, or in the number of the Sacraments, or some such Schoole question: yet do they either not know, or at least not beleeve all the true grounds of Popery.”29 It is reasonable to speculate that James’s refusal of Victory’s sword in the masque acts out his mercy towards such “honest men.” Harington’s claim that the gunpowder plot “is got out of all our heads” clearly does not mean that it is no longer a matter of concern; it has not gone out of his head. Perhaps the anonymous author of the entertainment also remembered it while planning his masque. We may even regard it as unlikely that a masque intended to idealize the monarch would fail to mention the most significant recent civic event af- fecting that monarch’s reign. The idealization of one of James’s policies in the masque would produce one more incongruity between the masque world and the actual world at court which Harington observed.

Harington is more optimistic concerning the second political issue he mentions, the attempt to unite England with Scotland. His com-

28. Cf. Crakanthorpe’s sermon on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon: “I must in silence passe by many other and great blessings, which by the meanes of our SALOMON, are heaped vpon vs. But let my tongue cleaue to the roofe of my mouth, if I forget chat one most memorable happinesse, which wee all receiued by him on that fift of Nouember. That one day shall be for euer a most glorious Trophaeum, and euerlashng Monument, both ofhis most blessed and vnspeakable Wisedom, and ofthe infinit blessings which by him we haue all recieued. ([18])

29. His Majesties Speach in this Last Session of Parliament . . . Together with a discourse of the manner ofthe discovery ofthis late intended Treason, joyned with an Examination ofsome ofthe prisoners (1605). cz-czv; cited by Mark Nicholls, Investigating Cunpqwder Plot (Manchester, 1991) p. 48. Nicholls’s entire chapter is relevant (pp. 47-61).


ment on this issue comes in the last paragraph of the letter, which immediately follows the paragraph that mentions the Gunpowder Plot. As was true with the reference to the Plot, we have no evidence that the masque itself also raised the issue, but the concern of the masque with empire would make a reference to the uniting of Great Britain themat- ically appropriate. Haringon only says, “I hear the uniting the lung- doms is now at hand; when the Parliament is held more will be done in this matter” (p. 121). He was not a prophet, and the expected union was a long time in coming, at least through Parliamentary channels. He does, however, correctly name James’s most industrious agent in the definition and proclamation of empire: “Bacon is to manage all the affair, as who can better do these state jobs” (p. 121). Francis Bacon was already, and would continue to be, a primary maker ofJacobean empire.

I11 Bacon’s Solomon and The New Atlantis

Harington’s letter offers only a tenuous connection between Bacon and the Theobalds masque. In several of his major works Bacon himself provides a much more substantial link by incorporating into his pro- posals the central strategy of such masques. As Stephen Orgel’s study of Jonson’s masques has shown, court masques had considerable potential, in the hands of a morally aware poet like Jonson, for significant political comment.30 It is certainly true that many masques in actual performance must have failed to rise above mere flattery, even when their authors meant for them to achieve something more: the masque at Theobalds is a case in point. Nevertheless, a successful masque could powerfully communicate what the court-and even the King-ought to be. The Theobalds masque not only praises James as Solomon, but also invites James to actualize a Solomonic vision for his court, to put into practice the political ideals of empire advanced in the masque as well as the ideals of wisdom, order, and peace associated with Solomon. The most important way a masque made such an appeal was in the role it assigned the monarch. In order for the court or kingdom adequately to match its image in the ideal world of the masque, the king himself must live up to the ideals of the masque; James must actually be like Solomon. Such identity goes beyond simply linking the name of a

3 0 . Orgel. Thejonsonian Masque (Cambridge, MA, 1965). I base my comment on Orgel’s argument as a whole, but see especially his first two chapten. See also Orgel’s T h e Illusion of Power(Berkeley, 1975) pp. 59-89 and Roy Strong, Splendor at Court pp. 19-76.

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masque character with the king’s. A masque’s presentation of a character could emphasize one or another attribute of that character or bal- ance several attributes against each other. The author’s choice of em- phasis would be his most ready means for encouraging specific political goals. Thus the Theobalds masque, by assigning to Solomon the peace- loving moral character James chose to see in himself, encouraged his pursuit of European influence-perhaps also his pursuit of the union of Great Britain and of foreign trade, the other elements of Jacobean imperialism: ifJames desires peace, he will promote empire. In the case of this particular masque, the motivation is neatly circular. The political goals it identifies, like its morality theoretically desirable to James, might be understood as the motivation for practical morality: if James desires empire, he will practice charity. Such circularity evades potential controversy and submerges the political in compliment. Bacon’s works avoid this circularity. When he compliments the &ng, he has his own goals in mind. If, like Harington, Bacon felt some hesitation about taking masquing seri~usly,~’ he nevertheless found something useful in its method.

Like the court masques, Bacon’s works ask King James to carry out the implications of a complimentary role created for him by the author; like the author of the Theobalds masque, Bacon asks James to play the part of Solomon. In particular, he envisions for James a Solomonic empire comprising union, foreign influence, and trade. Bacon’s charac- terization of Solomon, however, differs from contemporary versions of Solomon/James. Although Bacon accepts and mentions the same Sol- omonic attributes mentioned by other authors in the period,32 he emphasizes something new: Solomon’s identity as a natural philosopher. By stressing Solomon’s association with natural philosophy, Bacon invites James to underwrite his own “scientific” program.33 The Sol- omonic empire he offers is an empire founded on the acquisition of

3 I . As ha essay “Of Masques and Triumphs” suggests. 32. In the opening pages of 7 h e Advancement ofkarning, e.g., he associates Solomon with the

chieftheological virtue, charity (I.i.3; pp. 9-10; I cite book, section, andsubsection numbers, as well as page numbers, from The Advancement o f k a r n i n g and New Atlanti5, ed. Thomas Case, The World’s Classics Series [Oxford, 1906; rpt. 19601). Bacon also associates James/Solomon with the union of Great Britain in Advancement (II.ii.8; p. 89). comparing Great Britain with the united Israel under David and Solomon.

33. When I use the term “scientific” with reference to Bacon, I mean it as a synonym for what he calls natural phllosophy. Bacon’s work might more properly be called “proto-scientific,’’ but the distinction is not particularly relevant to my argument and to make it consistently seem unnecessarily cumbersome.


knowledge.34 Bacon most fully pictures this empire in his unfinished utopian fiction, T h e New Atlantis (begun I 624; posthumously published 1627). Like the empire represented by the Theobalds masque, Bacon’s Bensalem has at its heart a temple,35 Salomon’s House, and relates temple and empire through a narrative that recalls in several ways the story of the Queen of Sheba.

As the Theobalds masque had done, The New Atlantis models a Solomonic empire. In it Bacon provides for King James a concrete representation of the empire his more strictly methodological works abstractly recommend. On the island of Bensalem the pursuits of spiritual and physical knowledge are coterminous and complementary, and both kinds of knowledge are more pure among the people of Bensalem than among any citizenry of Europe. The high regard for both kinds of knowledge in this exemplary society is explained as deriving hom the enlightened rule of an overtly Solomonic king, and the implementation of this king’s political and social vision has established a Solomonic empire more geographically extensive than any empire in the ancient

This empire is centered on Bacon’s rebuilding-instauratio-of Solomon’s temple in “Salomon’s House.”37 The centrality of Salomon’s House implies the dependence of the material empire on the life of the mind, indicating Bacon’s priorities. On the other hand, Bacon’s model leaves open the essential compatibility of his program with &ng James’s material concerns, and the work manages to suggest, although in a qualified way, that Bacon’s program is the means to King James’s ends. We may reasonably guess that if Bacon had finished The New Atlantis and prepared it for publication himself, its final form would have included a more direct application of the text to King James than appears

34. For Bacon’s connection of empire with knowledge, see, e.g., Advancement 1.v.2, p. 38; II.vii.z, p. 107; The Novum Organum I.xcii, p. 91; I.cxiv, p. 104; for the %anurn I cite The New Organon, ed. Fulton H. Anderson, The Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis, 1960) by book, section, and page numbers.

3 5 . Bacon sees himself as “laying a foundation in the human understanding for a holy temple after the model ofthe world” (Organum I.cxx, p. IW). In particular he has in mind the world as an object of natural philosophy, that is, the universal project he ascribes to the Bensalemite House ofsalomon.

36. At least on its own terms. The Bensalemites are not interested in owning the whole world, but exercise apparently limitless freedom of movement within it and readily acquire everything they want or need. They are comfortably affluent without being greedy.

37. For the significance of Bacon’s inrtauratio, see Charles Whitney, Francir Bacon and Moder- nity (New Haven, 1986) pp. 23-54. In his recent The Word of Cod and the Language5 ofMan: Interpreting Nature in Eady Modern Snence and Medicine, vol. I (Madison, WI, 1995). pp. 207-46, James J. Bono usefully criticizes several ofwhitney’s readings.

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in the work we have; his other works show no reluctance in complimenting James as Solomon by way of seeking support for the Baconian program. 38

Although the work lacks a specific comparison between James and Solomon, we may discern in The New Atlantis two clear indications of Bacon’s Solomonic vision for James. The first makes direct allusions to Solomon that recall Bacon’s use of Solomon with reference to James in other works. For example, in the epistle “To the King” which opens T h e Advancement ofLearning, Bacon applies to James a description of Solomon from I Kings 4.29, calling his heart “as the sands of the sea” &“To the King,” 2.4). The description of King Solamona in The New Atlafitis comes from the same verse (p. 207). Simdarly, Solarnona founds Salomon’s House to engage in an imitation of Solomon’s experiments in natural history, which gave him knowledge of “all plants, fiom the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall” @p. 276- 77). The description of Solomon’s knowledge comes from I Kings 4.33, a verse Bacon cites in The Advancement of Learning to urge a similar program on King James (1.vi.1 I , p. 47). These connections with James are fairly straightforward and have often been noticed, although more could be made of them.39 At present, however, I must pass over them to a connection which has not been noticed, as far as I can discover.

The second indication in The New Atlantis of Bacon’s Solomonic vision for King James is the structuring of the narrative in accordance with the King’s own reference to the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Like the Theobalds masque, The New Atlantis re-enacts the visit of the Queen to Solomon, emphasizing the orderliness King James’s Basilikon Doron had noted in Solomon’s household and state. Like the Queen of Sheba, the European visitors to Bensalem are travelers from a distant country who are most noteworthy for their need to ask questions. Their questions are graciously answered in ways that amaze them. The visitors are also amazed by the order and happiness of the society they are visitipg. They respond by reforming their lives and by offering gifts which their hosts do not need, and they receive gifts which outvalue anything they have brought with them.

The Governor of the Strangers’ House makes a point of the visitors’ need to ask questions. He opens a conversation by inviting their ques-

38. See, e.g., the letter “To the King” which prefaces The Advancement. 39. In addition to Whitney, see John C. Brigs, Frantic Baron and the Rhetoric cf Nature

(Cambridge, MA, 1989) pp. 6-9, 13-40; and Julian Maron, Frantic Bacon, the Srare, and the Reform oJNatural Philosophy (Cambridge. 1992). pp. 105-71.


tions, explaining that “because he that knoweth least is fitted to ask questions, it is more reason, for the entertainment of the time, that ye ask me questions than that I ask you” (AL, p. 266). The visitors ac- quiesce in accepting the role of “he that knoweth least,” “humbly” thanking their host and proceeding with their questions. Their need to ask questions continues throughout the work. The Governor begins his next interview with them simply by stating, “Well, the questions are on your part” (NA, p. 269). The spokesman-narrator of the group later questions Joabin concerning the organization of families on the island; he is also chosen for the interview with the father of Salomon’s House, whose entire speech answers a series of implicit questions.40 The answers to all of these questions produce joyfid amazement, and the visitors’ expressions of this amazement echo the Queen of Sheba’s “Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants” (I Kings 10.8). Even before asking their first question (but after he has given them permission to ask) they tell the Governor “we conceived, by the taste we had already, that there was no worldly thing on earth more worthy to be known than the state of that happy land” (NA, p. 266). Their second question is likewise about the state of “this happy island” (p. 269). Their reaction to the island society echoes that of the islanders, who themselves echo the Queen of Sheba. In response to the honoring of a large family, the Bensalemites exclaim together, “Happy are the people of Bensalem” (p. 281).

The visitors’ own experience of this happiness mingles with amazement. When they are first given permission to leave the Strangers’ House and assured that all their needs will be met, they stare at each other, “admiring this gracious and parent-like usage, that we could not tell what to say,” and their host leaves them “conhsed with joy and kindness” (p. 265). They are again speechless after he answers their questions: “he was silent, and so were we all; for indeed we were all astonished to hear so strange things so probably told” @. 278).

Although they meet “with many things, right worthy of obspvation and relation” (p. 279), one thing they repeatedly notice would have held special interest for King James. In the Basilikon Doron James had approved of the Queen of Sheba’s reaction to the “comely order among

40. It is worth noticing that this interview IS “staged in a way consistent w t h artists’ representations of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (Lke Holbein’s with Henry VIII as Solomon): “We found him in a fair chamber, richly hanged, and carpeted under foot, without any degrees to the state. He was set upon a low throne richly adorned, and a rich cloth of state over his head” (NA, p. 287). The one anomaly is the lack ofsteps (“degrees”).

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[Solomon’s] servants.” He advises Prince Henry to establish in his own household “such a comely and honourable order’’ in order to gain the same response from his own foreign visitors (McIlwain, p. 3 3). The foreign visitors to the New Atlantis, on their first arrival, notice the orderliness of the entire society. They are led “through three fair streets;” and as the narrator describes it, “all the way we went there were gathered some people on both sides, standing in a row; but in so civil a fashion, as if it had been, not to wonder at us, but to welcome us” (p. 261). They notice the same order during the arrival of the father of Salomon’s House: “The street was wonderfully well kept; so that there was never any army had their men stand in better battle-array than the people stood. The windows likewise were not crowded, but every one stood in them, as if they had been placed” (p. 286).

In response to this orderliness, as much as to the courtesy of their welcome, the visitors undertake individual personal reformation so as not to jeopardize their reception in Bensalem. After they have taken up residence in the Strangers’ House, the narrator calls them together and reminds them of the precariousness of their circumstances. Like the prophet Jonah, they have been miraculously rescued fi-om death at sea, but they are still in a foreign land. “Therefore,” he says, “in regard of our deliverance past, and our danger present and to come, let us look up to God, and every man reform his own ways” (p. 263). The reformation he calls for is also motivated by their initial observations ofthe people of Bensalem; their hosts live up to a high standard of Christian virtue, and their quarantine may be, in addition, a test:

Besides we are come here amongst a Christian people, full of piety and hu- manity: let us not bring that confusion of face upon ourselves, as to show our vices or unworthiness before them. Yet there is more, for they have by com- mandment . . . cloistered us within these walls for three days:41 who knoweth whether it be not to take some taste of our manners and conditions? And if they find them bad, to banish us straightways; if good, to give us further time. For these men that they have given us for attendance, may withal have an eye upon us. Therefore, for God’s love, and as we love the weal of our souls and bodies, let us so behave ourselves, as we may be at peace with God, and may find grace in the eyes of this people. (pp. 263-64)

Fortunately for everyone, his companions agree with his proposal: “Our company with one voice thanked me for my good admonition, and

41. The perlod of three days probably derives fiom Matthew 12.40, where it explains the “sign ofJonas” refered to in both Matthew 12.39 and Luke I 1.29-30. The verse was generally accepted as Christ’s prophecy ofhis own resurrection.


promised me to live soberly and civilly, and without giving any the least occasion of offence” (p. 264). The speaker’s allusion to Jonah’s deliverance simultaneously identifies his companions as somehow like both Jonah and Jonah’s Ninevite audience, who responded to his preaching with repentance and reformation of life. If the visitors to Bensalem reform their lives, they will resemble the Ninevites, not Jonah. The spin Bacon puts on the story may be attributable to its association in the New Testament with the story of the Queen of Sheba. In both Matthew 1 2 . 3 8-42 and Luke I I 29-32, Christ treats the repentance of the Nine- vites as proverbial, comparing it with the Queen of Sheba’s reaction to Solomon. He says that he is himself like Jonah. Although Bacon mentions only the Jonah story here, his attribution of reformation to those who are visiting Bensalem better fits the details of the Solomon story and suggests the influence of this New Testament juxtaposition:

But [Jesus] answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Ninevah shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came fbrn the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. (Matthew 12.39-42; the Luke passage is parallel)

In The New Atlantis it is the European visitors who have come “from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” Just as the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Jerusalem results in her religious conversion, so the Europeans’ visit to Bensalem results in their religious reform.

Like the Queen of Sheba, the visitors offer gifts to their hosts. In the case of the Queen, these gigs are accepted but ultimately countered by greater gifts. In the context of I Kings 9 and 10 (which, as a whole, describe Solomon’s trade relations) this exchange of gifts suggests the ritual of trade negotiations as well as a civilized competition in which Solomon easily dominates.42 Crakanthorpe’s comment on the Queen’s gifts suggests an additional implication. He says that “These great, magnificent, and princely gifts bestowed by this Queene on King Salomon,

42. Patricia Fumerton’s chapter on the cultural implications of gift-giving in Tudor and Stuart England is helpful here (pp. 29-66).

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as the like also from other Princes sent unto him . . . was not for any want or necessity at all, for Siluer was nothing esteemed in Sulornons dayes . . . But they were outward & euident testimonies of that re- uerence & loue, & of that louing and honorable respect, which both she and they had to King Salornan” (p. 46). In short, the gifts are a form of tribute. They represent the submission of an inferior to a superior. Like Solomon, the Bensalemites demonstrate their trade superiority as well as their generous hospitality in their easy dismissal of European tips, their indifference to their visitors’ desire to trade, and their overall bounty. Before the Europeans first come ashore, they offer their initial guide “some pistolets,” but he responds that “he must not be twice paid for one labour.” The visitors later learn that the Bensalemites custom- arily “call an officer that taketh rewards, twice-paid” (pp. 260-61). When they are led to the Strangers’ House the next day, they offer another guide “twenty pistolets,” but he also smiles and exclaims “ ‘What? twice paid!’ ” (p. 262). The visitors finally stop offering.

The Bensalemites are more open to the suggestion of trade, although like Solomon they clearly do not need anything their visitors have to offer. Their willingness to trade is an expression of hospitality, that is, a cultural rather than a financial transaction. Thus it does not matter to them for what goods they trade or whether they realize a profit. Fur- thermore, their indifference to trade advantage tacitly assumes a superior social standing. In fact, they condescend to their visitors in the same way Solomon condescends to the Queen of Sheba by politely receiving her gifts and then overwhelming her with his own. The Governor of the Strangers’ House communicates Bensalem’s terms: “As for any merchandize ye have brought, ye shall be well used, and have your return, either in merchandize or in gold and silver; for to US it is all one” (p. 265).

The Bensalemites’ lack of concern with trade is undoubtedly a re- flection of their considerable prosperity, expressed in unlimited generosity to their guests. The Governor informs the visitors that the State will permit them to stay for six weeks, but immediately qualifies this permission with assurances that indefinite extensions of the deadline are possible. Furthermore, the State will support its guests for as long as they stay: “Ye shall also understand,” explains the Governor, “that the Strangers’ House is at this time rich, and much aforehand; for it hath laid up revenue these thirty-seven years . . , and therefore take ye no care; the State will defray you in all the time you stay. Neither shall you stay one day the less for that” (pp. 264-65). Such open-endedness


resembles the generosity of Solomon to his visitor. She had given him impressive quantities of gold, spices, and jewels, but “king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire,43 whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty” (I Kings 10.13) . This verse closes the biblical account of the Queen’s visit; the next sentence records her return home. In its present form, T h e New Atfaatis ends similarly, with the father of Salomon’s House granting permission to publish information about Bensalem (something the narrator evidently desires), and giving “ a value of about two thousand ducats for a bounty to me and my fellows. For they give great largesses, where they come, upon all occasions” (p. 298). T h e New Atlantis thus follows a narrative line remarkably similar to that in the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba.

Bacon’s political goals, however, differ significantly from those of the author to the Theobalds masque, at least insofar as we can reconstruct these goals fiom Harington’s account. The structural similarity between the two works marks them as products ofthe same tradition, but juxtaposition of the works reveals a more significant difference between them. The Temple-like Salomon’s House recalls the setting of the Theobalds masque as the symbolic spiritual and philosophical center of an empire, but when Bacon’s narrator meets with a representative of Salomon’s House, the wise man espouses a different spirit and philosophy: “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible” (p. 288). Rather than rely on con- quest, this empire maintains its vigor through a kind of commerce, not dealing in the customary items of trade, but in knowledge. As the Governor of the Strangers’ House explains it, “we maintain a trade, not for gold, silver or jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, nor any other commodity of matter; but only for God’s first creature, which was light” (p. 278). Unlike the Theobalds masque, which encouraged King James to acquire and consume wealth, Bacon’s New Atlantis urges the pursuit of knowledge even to the point of abandoning commerce.44

Bacon makes the point light-handedly. IfJames had seen The New

43. One tramtion claims that what she desired was to be impregnated by Solomon; the ruling family ofEthiopia, including Ethiopia’s last monarch, claimed descent fiom this union.

44. On the related tension between materialism and antimaterialism in The New Atlantis, see Jeffrey Knapp, A n Empire Nowhere: England, America, and LiteraturejomUtopia to The Tempest (Berkeley, 1992) pp. 245-48.

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Atlantis, he could easily have ignored the particular implications of the Governor’s comment in favor of the more conventionally Solomonic prosperity evident throughout the rest of the work. Bacon’s major work of fiction, if it had been finished, would have spread before King James a more significant challenge, a dramatically realized vision of Bacon’s philosophical method and goals; it would have answered the question perennially asked of theory: “what would this look like in practice?” James dismissed the Novurn Organum as ~n readab le ,~~ but The New Atlantis would have confronted him with a very readable recommenda- tion of the same program that was more difficult to ignore. Bacon thus turns the tradtion back on itself. I began by asking what sort of response, from his own people and from foreign visitors, would be appropriate for the Solomonic James. Another way to ask this would be “what kind of kingdom should Solomon have?” Like the Theobalds masque, the question assumes the Solomonic nature of the king. The masque’s answer to the question is to give King James the kingdom he wants. Bacon, on the other hand, describes a Solomonic kingdom and tacitly asks the question, “what kind of king should a Solomonic kingdom have?” Although he calls James such a king, his works implicitly require the king to change.

U N I V E R S I T Y OF NORTH C A R O L I N A A T CHAPEL HILL

45. See Whitney p. 17.