Measure for Measure 5

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (5)

Shake-Speare:

Claudio:  “. . .all the enrolled penalties which have, like unscour'd armour, hung by th' wall so long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round and none of them been worn;”   . . . “Now puts the drowsy and neglected act freshly on me.”

Measure for Measure, 1.2.165-170

Bacon:

“Obsolete laws that are grown into disuse.” De Augmentis 7.3.57

“There are a number of ensnaring penal laws, which lie upon the subject; and if in bad times they should be awaked and put in execution, would grind them to powder.”

Life and Letters, 6. P.65

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Shake-Speare:

Claudio: Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to the world?”

Provost: “I do it not in evil disposition, But from Lord Angelo by special charge”.

Measure for Measure, 1.2.115

(Claudio is shamed and scandalized above and beyond the penalty of death.)

Bacon:

“And let there be, besides penalty, a note of infamy or punishment by way of admonishing others, and chastising delinquents, as it were, by putting them to the blush with shame and scandal”.

Aphorism 40