Parallel - Weep to have through fear of losing - Sonnet 64

First, Shake-Speare:

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminante –

That time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Sonnet 64, 11-14

Also:

Portia:                   then confess

What treason there is mingled with your love.

Bassanio:  None but that ugly treason of mistrust,

Which make me fear th’enjoying of my love,

The Merchant of Venice, 3.2.26-31

Now, Bacon:

[A classical dictum]  Non uti ut non appetas, non appetere ui non metuas,

Sunt animi pusilli et diffidentis [To abstain from the use of a thing that you may not feel a want of it; to shun the want that you may not feel the loss of it, are the precautions of pusillanimity and cowardice].

The Advancement of Learning (Spedding 3.427)

I will not use because I will not desire. I will not desire because I will not fear to want.

A Conference of Pleasure p. 5

Comment: Fearing to lose love was of course a commonplace. But to weep to have it in case you lose it suggests that Shake-Speare had in mind the philosophical conundrum of the Bacon texts. (The conundrum is said to have its source in Plutarch’s Life of Solon).