Distinctions of internal evidence can be drawn from the subjects of the writings, the treatment, the accessories, and the style in relation to the lives of the two men we are considering. Now, though it is too much to say that Bacon would not have chosen any of Shakspere's subjects, it is certainly permissible to assert he could not have chosen all of them; because Bacon never wrote without some intention, either didactic or practical. Therefore, while some of the histories might have been written as warnings, and others as glorifications of the reigning sovereign, nothing in his life or writings suggests a possibility of his having treated pure poetry for art's sake. There seems no cause likely to have tempted him to select subjects like Midsummer's Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It. The same remark may be applied to the poems. One cannot imagine Bacon selecting either Venus or Lucrece as “inventions” worthy the devotion of his pen. A few masques, a New Atlantis, a few sonnets, a few psalms, are all he has acknowledged.

But the difference is more strongly exemplified when we turn to the treatment of the subjects. Bacon's criticisms of poetry, De Augmentis, book ii. chap, xiii., shows that he considers it has a right to go beyond Nature in treating life, and to introduce a moral and physical order higher than is found compatible with truth.