Friday, March 25, 2011

Parallel - The Tempest: Print of Goodness 1 of 2

This parallel is the first of two parallels from The Tempest that Cockburn believes, by their remarkableness, reach the status of proof of common authorship by themselves. It is also one of 4-5 sets of parallels that he believes can have such status. 


In The Tempest 1.2.353-5 we have:

"Abhorred slave
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill!"

On "any print of goodness" the Arden editor comments: "Tannenbaum would read point, but the metaphor seems to be from printing". They would hardly have had any doubt about it if they had known these Bacon parallels:

"Veritas [truth] and Bonitas [goodness] differ but as the seal and the print; for truth prints goodness."
  Bacon in The Advancement of Learning

"This Janus of imagination hath differing faces: for the face towards Reason hath the print of Truth, but the face towards Action hath the print of Goodness."
Bacon's The Advancement of Learning

"The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in human nature."
Bacon's Essay on Goodness

"Let it be . . . that, living or dying, the print of the goodness of King James may be in my heart."
Bacon's Letter to King James in 1624

Chronologically Shake-Speare could have borrowed from The Advancement texts, but Bacon could not have borrowed from the published play. Did any other Elizabethan speak of the "print" of goodness?

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