Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Bacon and Shakespeare - Attitude on Love - Part 2

Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon

Attitude to Love   Part 2 of 2

I will now demonstrate that Shake-Speare and Bacon said many of the same things about love,
nearly all of them conventional more or less.

1. Shake-Speare:  Love moderately; long love doth so
    Bacon:                Love me little; love me long
2. Shake-Speare:  Why to love I can allege no cause
    Bacon:                He [Cupid, i.e. Love] is...without a cause
3. Shake-Speare:  He's mad that trusts in...a boy's love
    Bacon:                 A boy's love and a dog's health do not endure
4. Shake-Speare:  I shall be loved when I am lacked
    Bacon:                When he is dead he will be loved
5. Shake-Speare:  By love the young and tender wit is turned to folly
    Bacon:                 Love is the child of folly
6. Shake-Speare:  Love is merely a madness
    Bacon:                Transported to the mad degree of love
7. Shake-Speare:  Love must creep in service where it cannot go
    Bacon:                 Love must creep where it cannot go
8. Shake-Speare:  To be wise and love exceeds man's might; that dwells 

                                  with gods above
    Bacon:                 It is not granted to man to love and be wise
9. Shake-Speare:  We are soldiers, and may that soldier mere recreant prove
                                 that means not, hath not, or is not in love .....
                                 A martial man to be soft fancy's slave!
    Bacon:                I know not how, but martial men are given to love
10. Shake-Speare: They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars
      Bacon:                Lovers never thought their profession sufficiently graced till
                                  they had compared it to a warfare
11. Shake-Speare: It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue in love
                                  to the Moor...she must change for youth
      Bacon:                Love is nourished in young flesh
12. Shake-Speare: Lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit
      Bacon:                A lover always commits some folly
13. Shake-Speare: O brawling love, O loving hate!
                           ...... My only love sprung from my only hate
      Bacon:               Love as if you were some day likely to hate. Hate as if you
                                  were some day likely to love
14. Shake-Speare: Believe not the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete 

                                  bosom
      Bacon:               Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak 
                                  passion
15. Shake-Speare: Love is blind
      Bacon:                Blind love
16. Shake-Speare: She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth;
                                  She burnt out love as soon as straw out-burneth
                           ......Do not  give dalliance too much the rein: the strongest oaths
                                 are straw to the fire in the blood
      Bacon:               A woman's love is like the fire of ___?
17. Shake-Speare: A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that
                                 would seem hid. Love's night is noon
      Bacon:               Love, a cough and an itch cannot be hidden
18. Shake-Speare: When I love thee not Chaos is come again
       Bacon:               Cupid...united with Chaos begat the gods and all things
                                  [This was not a commonplace]
19. Shake-Speare: Love...with the motion of all elements
      Bacon:                It is motion therefore that animateth all things....the affections
                                  are the motions of the mind
                                 [The working of this parallel with its emphasis on "motions" 

                                 was not, I think, a commonplace]
20. Shake-Speare: Now for the love of Love and her soft hours....There's not a 

                                 minute of our lives should stretch without some pleasure now
      Bacon:                Love is...a true purchase of pleasure
21. Shake-Speare: Prosperity's the very   bond of love
                             .....Where nothing wants [in my beloved] that want itself doth 

                                  seek .....This spring of love...love's spring
      Bacon:             When we be in prosperity, when we want nothing, then is the
                                 season the opportunity and the spring of love
22. Shake-Speare: Speed: You never saw her since she was deformed
                                 Valentine: How long hath she been deformed?
                                 Speed: Ever since you loved her
      Bacon:                 Love...sweeteneth the harshness of all deformities
                                   [Speed humorously inverts Bacon's dictum]
23. Shake-Speare:  Is not love a Hercules?
      Bacon:                Let no man fear the yoke of fortune that's in the yoke of love.
                                   What fortune can be such a Hercules as shall be able to 

                                  overcome two?
                                   When two souls are joined in one, when one hath another 

                                   to divide his fortune withal, no force can depress him
24. Shake-Speare: Thy love did read by Rote and could not spell
      Bacon:                Now therefore will I teach lovers to love that have all this
                                   while loved by Rote. I will give them the alphabet of love. 

                                  I will show them how it is spelled
25. Shake-Speare: O flatter me, for love delights in praises
      Bacon:                There is no flatterer like to that of a lover
26. Shake-Speare:  Love, first learned in a lady's eyes
                             ......It is engendered in the eyes with gazing fed
      Bacon:                To leave where love begineth, who discerneth not that the
                                  eye is the most affecting sense?...the eye is first contented 

                                  in love



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