Promus - 16 Romeo and Juliet - Lodged next - end of the hall

Part 2 - Parallels between Bacon's Promus and Romeo and Juliet
(with special emphasis on Promus Folio 112)

Part 2j

R&J  Act 2.3.27-42

 (As Romeo walks home from his balcony scene with Juliet, he comes across Friar Lawrence):

Romeo: Good morrow, father.
Friar:     Benedicite!
            What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?               {Line 28}
            Young son, it argues a distempered head
            So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.
            Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,          {line 31}
            And where care lodges sleep will never lie;
            But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain
            Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.
            Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
            Thou art uprous'd with some distemp'rature;
            Or if not so, then here I hit it right-
            Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.
Romeo: That last is true-the sweeter rest was mine.
Friar:     God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline?
Romeo: With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No.
               I have forgot that name, and that name's woe.

Now Bacon's Promus 1189 (Folio 112):

"Good morrow"

Comment: Shake-Speare uses this salutation, meaning "Good morning", 96 times. Mrs. Pott examined about 5300 works, including many plays. Yet she found (so she claimed) that morning and evening salutations were not in general use till many years after Shake-Speare's time. Instead, characters in plays tended to greet each other with, e.g, "How now, my Lord?"; or "How now, Sirrah?". Outside Shake-Speare she found only 31 instances of "Good morrow" as a morning salutation; and before 1594, the commencement date of the Promus, she found none at all. But no doubt Mrs. Pott missed many instances of its use, though perhaps only in a later period. For example, in upwards of 40 Beaumont and Fletcher plays, she found it only 5 times. But in 20 of the plays Crawford claimed to have found it 47 times (Collections, p. 80). Still, it may be correct that the salutation was relatively rare before 1594, and that it was a particular favourite with Shake-Speare. And it heads Bacon's list on Folio 112.

Bacon's Promus 1216 (Folio 112):

"Sweet, fresh of the morning"

Comment: This finds some echo in Line 28: "What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?" Shake-Speare makes the same association of earliness and sweetness in  2 Henry VI, 1.2.24: "Sweet rehearsal of my morning's dream".

Promus 1204 (Folio 112):

"Qui a bon voisin a bon matin
  (lodged next "

This French proverb (as discussed previously) probably implied that good sleep needs a good neighbour. The important words here are "lodged next", written beneath the proverb. Also relevant is the Promus entry 1228, at the end of the Folio, which associates good sleep with good lodging. Bacon would surely not have recorded the seemingly inconsequential "Lodged next" for general purposes; it only makes sense if he was mulling over some specific line. So one wonders if he was thinking of Friar Lawrence saying something like:

"Care keeps his watch in every old man's eyes    [see lines 31-2]
 Where care is lodged next, sleep never lies".

My No Fear Shake-Speare rephrases this as:

"Every old man has worries, and worried men never get any sleep,
but young men shouldn't have a care in the world".

[Interestingly, another "seemingly inconsequential" phrase is found on The Northumberland MS left of and a little below that of the entry for "Rychard the third". This is the phrase "end of the hall" which can be found (by coincidence we are supposed to believe) in Richard III [, 3.7.35.]. Its presence there fits the Baconian authorship theory perfectly since it suggests that someone was preparing a clean copy of the play for publication. But it makes no sense from the theory of "It's just a coincidence".