7. Bacon's Promus entry 1391
"He will never do his tricks clean"
Troilus And Cressida 5.2.23-4
Cressida: what would you have me do?
Thersites: A juggling trick: to be secretly open.
Comment: The Arden editor paraphrases Thersites's line as a "deception [to be] privately public (or some such impossibility)". Bacon's line and Shake-Speare's are deliberate and almost identical paradoxes - a trick is by definition dirty, and a juggling trick by definition secret.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Bacon's Promus entry 1401
"It is not the first untruth i have heard reported. It is not the first truth I have heard denied"
Measure for Measure 5.1.68-70
"Let your reason serve
To make the truth appear where it seems hid,
And hide the false [which] seems true”.
Comment: This makes the same rather fine distinction as Bacon between falsehood and suppression of truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment