Measure for Measure 2

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (2)

Shake-Speare:

Duke. “The nature of our people, Our city's institutions, and the terms for common justice, y'are as pregnant in as art and practice hath enriched any that we remember”.

Measure for Measure, 1.1.9

(Here, Escalus is chosen as commissioner because he knows the nature of the people—as Bacon prescribed).

Bacon:

“Unto princes and states, and especially towards wise senates and councils, the natures and dispositions of the people…ought to be…in great part clear and transparent.” 

Advancement of Learning, 2.23.48

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Shake-Speare:

Duke. “Thyself and thy belongings are not thine own so proper as to waste thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee”.

Measure for Measure,1.1.29

“Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves. For if our virtues did not go forth of us, ‘twere all alike as if we had them not”.

Measure for Measure, 1.1.32

(The Duke tells Angelo that his virtues should not be wasted, but should serve society.)

See also King John 5.1.45  "Be great in act, as you have been in thought"

See also Hamlet, 4.4.36-39  "Sure He that made us ... gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused."

See also Merchant of Venice, 5.1.90  "How far that little candel throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

Bacon:

“The king’s most excellent majesty …hath thought fit not to leave you these talents to be employed upon yourself only, but to call you to serve himself and his people.”

(Life and Letters, Spedding et al., 6. p. 201)

“I do think every man in his particular bound to help the commonwealth the best he may.”

Life and Letters, Spedding et al., 3. P.19

“For what is your virtue if you show it not”? Life and Letters, 1. P. 333

Also, the Bibilical verse: Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light to all that are in the house.” (Matthew 5.15)

Parallel - Garments as Behavior

First Shakespeare:

"...so shall inferior eyes
That borrow their behaviours from the great
Grow great by your example and put on
the dauntless spirit of resolution,"
  King John 5.1.50-53

"So when this loose behaviour I throw off,"
  1 Henry IV, 1.2.203

"How oddly he's suited. I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his
round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere."
  The Merchant of Venice 1.2.70-73

Now Bacon:
 "Behaviour is but a garment,"
   Letter to the Earl of Rutland
"Behaviour seemeth to me as a garment of the mind, and to have the conditions of a garment."
   The Advancement of Learning
"Men's behaviours should be like their apparel, not too straight or point device [dandified], but free for exercise or motion."
  Essay on Ceremonies and Respects

Cockburn's comment:
 "There are about a score of other passages in Shake-Speare which associate behaviours with clothing. Probably other Elizabethan writers did likewise, but the metaphor seems to have been a particular favourite with Bacon and Shake-speare."

Parallel - Bastinado and Cudgelled

First Shake-Speare:

"He gives the bastinado with his tongue;
Our ears are cudgelled;"

King John 2.1.463-4

now Bacon:  "No man loves one the better for giving him the bastinado [thrashing] with a little cudgel."
Advice to Queen Elizabeth

Comment: In the sentence quoted Bacon advises against subjecting Papists to petty annoyances (hence "a little cudgel"). this parallel derives its force from the collocation of "bastinado" and "cudgel"/"cudgelled"; and from the fact that in the  Shake-Speare passage too the cudgelling is spoken of contemptuously - the cudgel is a little one.

Parallels - Shakespeare's King John and Bacon

Here is shown what parallels exist between a single Shake-Speare play - King John - and a single Bacon work, the History of Henry VII (1622). Bacon seldom philosophizes in that work, so the only parallels we can expect to find, if our two authors are one, between the play and the history, are little snatches of distinctive phraseology. And we do find them. Individually they are slight, but cumulatively significant.

K.J. 1.1.188:  'too respective [respectful] and too sociable'
Bacon:          'towards his Queen respective and companionable'

K.J. 2.1.82:   'For courage mounteth with occasion'
Bacon:         'His wit increased upon the occasion'
note: There was a proverb "Great courage is in greatest dangers tried". But Shake-Speare words it similarly to Bacon's line.

K.J. 2.1.241-2: 'For this down-trodden equity we tread
                       In war-like march these greens before your town,'
Bacon:            'He had  given order that there should be nothing in his journey like unto a warlike march'
note: The usual expression was "to tread a march", without the inclusion of "warlike".

K.J. 2.1.568-9 & 587-8
                'That broker [expediency] that still breaks the pate of faith,
                 That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,'
                 ...
                'And why rail I on this commodity [expediency]?    (line 587)
                 But for because he hath not woo'd me yet'
Bacon:      'And for the politic and wholesome laws which were enacted in his
                 time they were interpreted to be but the brokage of an usurper
                 thereby to woo and win the hearts of the people.'
note:  Compare Hamlet 1.3.126-31 where Polonius tells Orphelia not to believe Hamlet's vows "for they are brokers...the better to beguile". Thus Bacon and Shake-Speare both describe expediency (supposed expediency in the Bacon passage) as a "broker" designed to "woo" or to "beguile".

K.J. 2.2.40:    'Which harm within itself so heinous'
Bacon:          'This offence, in itself so heinous'

K.J. 3.3.167:   The legate Pandulph tells the Dauphin that the people will "pick
                     strong matter of revolt and wrath / Out of the bloody fingers' ends
                     of John".
Bacon:           'Some [people] prying and picking matter out of Perkin's countenance and gesture to talk of'

K.J. 3.3.176-7   [of amassing soldiers] 'Or as a little snow, tumbled about,
                      Anon becomes a mountain.'
Bacon:           'Their snowball did not gather as it rolled.'
note:  In both these texts the rolling snowball image is used of military forces.

K.J. 2.1.114 & 3.3.181
                 'To look into the blots and stains of right.'    (line 114)
                 'I will whet on [play on] the King.'             (line 181)
Bacon:       '[There] began to be discovered in the King that disposition which
                  afterwards nourished and whet on by bad counsellors and ministers,
                  proved the blot of his time.'

K.J. 4.2.203:    'Why seek'st thou to possess me with these fears?'
Bacon:            'And he was possessed with many secret fears.'
note:  This Shake-Speare text is immediately followed by the King John parallel in the previous post.
note 2: Shake-Speare uses similar words in 1 Henry IV 2.2.100 and Henry V, 4.1.296,

K.J. 5.1.69:     'Arms invasive'
Bacon:           'It was not the first blow that made the war invasive.'

K.J. 5.7.53-4:   'The shrouds wherewith my life should sail'
Bacon:            'Indeed it came to pass that divers came away by the thread,
                      Sometimes one and sometimes another.'

K.J. 1.1.92:     'A half face like my father'
Bacon:           'Neither did they observe so much as the half face of justice'

It is legitimate to wonder whether one could find any other single play written at any time by any author other than Shake-Speare which shares with Bacon's Henry VII, 11 or more such turns of speech, most of them, it seems, idiosyncratic to some extent.

Parallel - King's humour as a warrant - King John

Now, from Shake-Speare's King John 4.2.203-15, 237 & 242

KING JOHN. Why seek'st thou to possess me with these fears?
    Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur's death?
    Thy hand hath murd'red him. I had a mighty cause
    To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.
  HUBERT. No had, my lord! Why, did you not provoke me?
  KING JOHN. It is the curse of kings to be attended
    By slaves that take their humours for a warrant
    To break within the bloody house of life,
    And on the winking of authority
    To understand a law; to know the meaning
    Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns
    More upon humour than advis'd respect.
  HUBERT. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.
...
King John. But thou didst understand me by my signs,
    ...
     Out of my sight, and never see me more!

now Bacon:
  "These ministers, being by nature cruel, and knowing well enough what they are wanted for, apply themselves to this kind of work with wonderful diligence; till from want of caution and from over eagerness to ingratiate themselves, they at one time or another (taking a nod or ambiguous word of the prince for a warrant) perpetrate some execution that is odious and unpopular. Upon which the prince, not willing to take envy [blame] of it upon himself, throws them overboard".  Wisdom of the Ancients (Spedding 6(2).704)

Also by Bacon: "Kings hate, when uttered, the very words they have ordered to be uttered: [Latin: Odere reges dicta quae dici jubent]. The Promus 367 (included here because it partners the above passage).

Note: These Bacon and Shake-Speare passages follow each other uncannily, even to the minister being thrown overboard. And their treatment of these matters only partly accords with Holinshed (see Arden edition p. 154).

King John was written by 1598 at the very latest. So Shake-Speare cannot have borrowed from The Wisdom of the Ancients which was not published till 1609; nor Bacon from the published play which did not appear till 1623.