Measure for Measure 18

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (18)

Shake-Speare:

Duke: “. . .; his unjust unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current, made it more violent and unruly”.

Measure for Measure, 3.1.241-44

“As all impediments in fancy’s course are motives of more fancy”

All’s Well that Ends Well, 5.3.214

“The more thou damm’st it up the more it burns”.

Two Gentlemen of Verona 2.7.24

Bacon:

“Force maketh nature more violent in the return”.

Essay Of Nature in Men

“The force with which an agent acts is increased by the antiperistasis (reaction) of its opposite”.

De Augmentis, 3.1

“Every passion grows fresh, strong and vigorous by opposition or prohibition as it were by reaction or antiperistasis”.

De Augmentis, 2.8.

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Shake-Speare:

Duke: “No might nor greatness in mortality can censure ‘scape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue”?

Measure for Measure, 3.2.175-178

Bacon:

Bacon considered this idea in writing to Queen Elizabeth (though he flatters her with overcoming it):

“You have now Madam obtained victory over two things, which the greatest princes in the world cannot at their wills subdue: the one is over fame, . . .” (meaning libel or slander).

Life and Letters, 3. P. 154