The Bacon and Shakespeare Theory of Spirits - 7

The Bacon and Shake-Speare Theory of "spirits"

part 7 of 9 

(h)  indulgence in sex causes expense of spirit

First, Shake-Speare:

Sonnet 129:

     Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
     Is lust in action, and till action, lust
     Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame,
     Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
     Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
     Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
     Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
     On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
     Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
     Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
     A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
     Before a joy proposed behind a dream.
       All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
       To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

On lines 1-2, compare Bacon's Natural History:

"It hath been observed by the ancients that much use of Venus [sex] doth dim the sight. The cause...is...the expense of spirits".

J.M. Robertson in his The Baconian Heresy (p. 457) gives two other instances of "spend spirits", namely:

"A scholar doth disdain to spend his spirits
Upon such base employment as a hard labour"
   Patient Grisil (1599) by Thomas Dekker

"Foolish enamorates who spend their ages, their spirits, nay themselves in the servile and ridiculous employments of their mistresses".
   Apology for Actors by Thomas Heywood

The first of these passages is not about lust, and the second is not solely about lust and does not use the exact expression "expense of spirit [or spirits]".

Now on lines 4-7 of the sonnet, compare Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients where in the chapter on Dionysus or Desire he says of desire of all kinds (in Spedding's translation of the Latin):

"[Desire] never rests satisfied with what it has, but goes on and on, with infinite insatiable appetite, panting after new triumphs. Tigers also are kept in its stalls and yoked to its chariot, for as soon as it ceases to go on foot and comes to ride in its chariot, as in celebration of its victory and triumph over reason, then it is cruel, savage and pitiless.

Surely one hears some echo here of Shake-Speare's cruel, savage, past reason.  How likely is it that two authors writing a few lines independently on this subject would both collocate the words italicised?

end of (h)

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(i)    blood and spirit are quite separate things

From Shake-Speare's Julius Caesar 2.1.166-70

"Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood.             [Line 168]
O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,
And not dismember Caesar!"

The odd-seeming line 168 is another application of the technical doctrine of spirits. On the theory of Bacon and others the blood and the spirit were quite separate things. We have seen under (b) above that the vital spirits but not the blood were considered to flow through the body's arteries. Bacon's conception of the vital spirits was that they were like "a breath compounded of flame and air", quoted earlier in (e). In a letter to King James of 1621 Bacon distinguished between spirit and blood, referring to Henry VII "whose spirit, as well as his blood, is doubled upon your Majesty".

end of (i) and of part 7

Parallel - Tides and Currents

First, Shakespeare:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to  fortune...
And we must take the current when it serves,"
   Julius Caesar  4.3.216

and Bacon: 

"The tides and currents of received errors"
   Reading on the Statute of Uses

"I set down reputation because of the peremptory tides and currents it hath; which if they be not taken in their due time, are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an
after game of reputation."
  The Advancement of Learning

"The tides of any opportunities... the periods and tides of estates"
    Letter to Robert Cecil

Comment: J.M. Robertson (p. 429) gives 11 other instances of tide or current metaphors. The nearest in meaning is the proverb: "The tide tarrieth no man". But Bacon and Shake-Speare spell out the idea more fully, and none of the other instances uses tides and currents in conjunction, as does the Shake-Speare passage and two of the three Bacon passages.

Measure for Measure 17

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (17)

Shake-Speare:

Duke: “ . . . Thou art not noble; For all th' accommodations that thou bear'st are nurs'd by baseness”.

Measure for Measure, 3.1.13

“He then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend”. Julius Caesar, 2.1.25

Bacon:

“The rising into place is laborious . . .and it is sometimes base”.

Essay Of Great Place

“ . . . by indignities men come to dignities”.

Essay Of Great Place

 Comment: So both Shake-Speare and Bacon think and say that from indignities or baseness men rise to dignities and accommodations.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -  -

Shake-Speare:

Isabella: “I am now going to resolve him; I had rather my brother die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born”.

Measure for Measure, 3.1.191

Bacon:

“Proceeding and resolving in all actions is necessary”.

Colour, iv

Parallels - Julius Caesar 3 of 3

Julius Caesar part 3 of 3

Some other parallels in this play

Decius [Brutus]: Shall no man else be touched but only Caesar?
Cassius:            Decius, well urged. I think it is no meet
                         Mark Antony, so well belov'd of Caesar,
                         Should outlive Caesar.
Julius Caesar 2.1.154-7

Compare to Bacon's Essay on Friendship:

"And it seemeth [Decius Brutus's] favour was so great...As if he had enchanted Caesar...The like or more [friendship] was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus...[Severus] did write also in a letter to the Senate, by these words: "I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me".

It seems (though scholars have missed this point) that Shake-Speare had Severus's letter in mind when he wrote the lines above, though he applies the dictum to Antony and Caesar and ironically treats Caesar's love as a reason why Antony should not outlive him.

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Caesar is  told that the augurs warn that he should not go forth that day,
but he dismissed them with  contempt. Calphurnia pleads with him:

          "Alas, my lord,
     Your wisdom is consumed in confidence.
     Do not  go forth today".
Julius Caesar 2.2.37-50

Bacon, alluding to this matter in his Latin De Augmentis says: "This extemity of confidence is ever as unlucky as unhallowed". The word "confidence" (or its Latin equivalent), used by both Shake-Speare and Bacon in the context, does not derive from Shake-Speare's source, North's Plutarch.

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Antony (of Caesar's death): "Here wast thou bay'd brave hart,
                             Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,
                             ...
                             How like a deer, strucken by many princes,
                             Dost thou here lie"!
Julius Caesar 3.1.204-5 and 209-210

This "stag at bay" metaphor is not in Plutarch or North (who merely say that Caesar was hacked and mangled as a wild beast taken by hunters), nor in Suetonius or any other source. But it is in Bacon who, describing Caesar's murder in his speech on Fortitude in his Conference of Pleasure, p. 8, to present before the Queen in 1595, said:

"They came about him unarmed, and as a stag at bay".

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Antony (of Caesar): "the noblest man / That ever lived"
  Julius Caesar 3.1.256-7

Bacon  (of Caesar): "the worthiest man that ever lived"
  Speech on Fortitude in Conference of Pleasure, p. 7

The Stratfordians seem unaware of all these Bacon/Shake-Speare parallels about Caesar. Shake-Speare could not have borrowed from Bacon, since none of the latter's works in question had been published when the play was written.  And Bacon could not have borrowed from the play which was not published till 1623, except possibly for the Natural History items (but Bacon would not take his theory of epilepsy from a playwright), or unless he had seen an early performance of the play and remembered even its minutiae of phraseology. Realistically, mutual borrowing is out of the question as an explanation of these parallels.

end of part 3

Parallels - Julius Caesar 2 of 3

Julius Caesar   Part 2 of 3

Now let us look at the latter part of the quote from the play mentioned in the previous post:

CASCA. ... and still as he
    refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands
    and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of
    stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had
    almost choked Caesar, for he swounded and fell down at it. And
    for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips
    and receiving the bad air.
  CASSIUS. But, soft, I pray you, what, did Caesars wound?
  CASCA. He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at mouth and was
    speechless.
  BRUTUS. 'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.
  CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I,
    And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

Caesar was known to be an epileptic ("the falling sickness"), but there is no historical source for his fainting when offered the crown. But Shake-Speare makes him swoon owing to the "stinking breath" of the mob. This was Bacon's eccentric theory that epilepsy was caused by gross vapours entering the cells of the brain.
In his Natural History Bacon wrote:

"It hath long been received and confirmed by divers trials that the root of the male peony dried, tied to the neck, doth help the falling sickness; and likewise the incubus which we call the mare. The cause of both these diseases, and especially of the epilepsy from the stomach, is the grossness of the vapours which rise and enter into the cells of the brain".

And Bacon thought that the smells which were most harmful were human smells. In the same work he wrote:

"If such smells be made by art and by the hand, they consist chiefly of man's flesh or sweat putrified; for they are not those stinks which the nostrils straight abhor and expel that are most perniciious but such airs as have some similitude with man's body, and so insinuate themselves and betray the spirits. There may be great danger in using such compositions in great meetings of people within houses, as in churches, at arraignments, at plays and solemnities and the like. And these empoisonments of air are the more dangerous in meetings of people, because the much breath of people doth further the infection. Therefore, when any such thing is feared, it were good those public places were perfumed before the assemblies"

Shake-Speare's "such a deal of stinking breath" corresponds to Bacon's "the much breath of people". And Shake-Speare has "sweaty" and "stinking" while Bacon uses "sweat" and "stinks". and Casca's "for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air" is echoed by Bacon's observation that breath "doth further the infection".

end of part 2 of 3

Parallels - Julius Caesar 1 of 3

Julius Caesar  Part 1 of 3

There are some tell-tale parallels between this play and Bacon works. Both our authors felt great, though qualified, admiration for Caesar. Shake-Speare's is obvious from his play. Bacon wrote a Character of Caesar and in his The Advancement of Learning called him "the most excellent spirit (his ambition reserved) of the world", and said that Caesar's history, letters and Apothegms "excel all men's else".

Shake-Speare:
Julius Caesar 1.2.217-51

  CASCA. Why, there was a crown offered him, and being offered him,
     he put it by with the back of his hand, thus, and then the
     people fell as shouting.
  BRUTUS. What was the second noise for?
  CASCA. Why, for that too.
  CASSIUS. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?
  CASCA. Why, for that too.
  BRUTUS. Was the crown offered him thrice?
  CASCA. Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler
    than other, and at every putting by mine honest neighbors
    shouted.
  CASSIUS. Who offered him the crown?
  CASCA. Why, Antony.
  BRUTUS. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
  CASCA. I can as well be hang'd as tell the manner of it. It was
    mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a
    crown (yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these
    coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once. But for all
    that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered
    it to him again; then he put it by again. But, to my thinking, he
    was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it
    the third time; he put it the third time by; and still as he
    refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands
    and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of
    stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had
    almost choked Caesar, for he swounded and fell down at it. And
    for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips
    and receiving the bad air.
  CASSIUS. But, soft, I pray you, what, did Caesars wound?
  CASCA. He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at mouth and was
    speechless.
  BRUTUS. 'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.
  CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I,
    And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

Let us first compare some of the above with a passage from Bacon's The Advancement of Learning. Bacon there gives three examples of Caesar's felicity of speech. He starts the first example: "As, first, it is reason to be thought a master of words, that could with one word appease a mutiny in his army, which was thus:".

Compare to Shake-Speare:

ANTONY. But yesterday the word of Caesar might
                 Have stood against the world.

Act 3.Scene2

Bacon then relates the incident and what Caesar said, and comes to the second example:

"The second speech was thus: Caesar did extremely affect the name of king; and some were set on as he passed by in popular acclamation to salute him king whereupon, finding the cry weak and poor, he put if off thus, in a kind of jest, as if they had mistaken his surname; Non Rex sum, sed Caesar...for Rex was a surname with the Romans, as well as King is with us".

Shake-Speare's source for the play was North's translation of Plutarch. But on two points the accounts of both Shake-Speare and Bacon resemble each other, while differing from north's:

a) North:              "Caesar refused it"

    Bacon:             "He put it off thus"

    Shake-Speare:  "He put it by with the back of his hand, thus...he put it by thrice...at every putting by...he put it by once...he put it by again."

b) Bacon:               "In a kind of jest"

    Shake-Speare:  "It was mere foolery"

                            North says nothing about Caesar refusing the crown in a jesting manner.

One could sit 100 people down to write independent accounts based on North of the offer of the crown to Caesar, and it is doubtful whether one of them would say "he put it by" or "he put it off"; and almost certainly not one would say he put it by or off "thus". In the Bacon passage the two uses of "thus" preface apt remarks made by Caesar. But in the Shake-Speare line "thus" must relate to a gesture to be made by the actor playing Casca to reflect Caesar's rejection of the crown. If Bacon was Shake-Speare, he probably already had in mind when he wrote the play in 1599 what later appears in the Advancement (written about 1604), namely, "He put it off thus...Non Rex sum, sed Caesar [my name is not Rex, but Caesar]". But he made three changes for the play.  (1) he dropped the Latin name joke (Rex/Caesar), probably as unsuited to the public Theatre;  (2) he changed "he put it by" to "he put it off;  (3)  he retained "thus" but related it to a physical gesture, not to a remark. This last change explains the second - "put it off" (ie. parried it) is better suited to a remark, "put it by" (ie. waved the crown aside) better suited to a gesture. It seems that the collocation of "put it by" with "thus" still lingered in Bacon's mind years later as he used them together again for another purpose. These little quirks of phraseology can be a fingerprint of authorship evidence.

end of part 1 of 3