‘As in a theatre’: scientific spectacle in Bacon's New Atlantis

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Address correspondence to: Donna Coffey, Associate Professor of English, Reinhardt College, 7300 Reinhardt College Circle, Waleska, GA 30183-2981, USA, E‐mail: [email protected]

A Conference of Pleasure, also known as ‘Of Tribute, or Giving what is Due’ of 1592 appears in Spedding, Bacon's Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 119–143; the Gesta Grayorum masque of January 1595 appears in Spedding, Bacon's Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 325–342; and the ‘Love and Self‐Love’ masque for Accession Day 1595 appears in Spedding, Bacon's Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 374–386. For discussions of the masques, see Martin (1992, pp. 64–71), McCoy (1989, pp. 85–86), Strong (1977, pp. 134–145 and 209) and Hammer (1998, pp. 41–66). Hammer gives a detailed examination of authorship questions surrounding the ‘Love and Self‐Love’ masque for Accession Day 1595 on pp. 45–46.

For discussions of both Stuart masques see Jardine and Stewart (1999, pp. 336–337 and 343–344), and Limon (1990, pp. 157–163 and 185–197).

A character in Jonson's play The Silent Woman, first produced in 1609, declares, ‘My very house turns round with the tumult! I dwell in a windmill! The perpetual motion is here, and not at Eltham’ (The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, Ed. G.A. Wilkes, Vol. III, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, pp. 211–212). And in his Epigrams [‘On the New Motion’] he writes, ‘See yond’ motion?/Not the old fa‐ding,/Nor Captain Pod, nor yet the Eltham thing,/But one more rare' (The Oxford Authors Ben Jonson, Ed. Ian Donaldson, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 257).

Quoted in Colie (1954, p. 257). Boyle, who had heard accounts of Drebbel's submarine, wrote in his ‘New Experiments physico‐mechanicall’ (1660) that he had been told that ‘Drebell conceiv’d, that ‘tis not the whole body of the Air, but a certain Quintessence (as Chymists speak) or spirituous part of it, that makes it fit for respiration’ and that Drebbel had bottled a ‘chymicall liquor’ which, when released in the submarine, would ‘speedily restore to the troubled air such a proportion of vitall parts as would make it againe for a good while fit for respiration’. See Rye (1967, pp. 238–239).

An excerpt from Tymme's Dialogue, as well as a reproduction of Tymme's diagram, can be found in Rye (1967, pp. 234–237).

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Donna Coffey

Address correspondence to: Donna Coffey, Associate Professor of English, Reinhardt College, 7300 Reinhardt College Circle, Waleska, GA 30183-2981, USA, E‐mail: [email protected]