Showing posts with label MSND. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MSND. Show all posts

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Parallel - Wonder and Knowledge


First Shake-Speare:
"Wonder on, till truth make all things plain."
  A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1.127

"All this amazement I can qualify,
when after that the holy rites are ended
I'll tell you largely of fair Hero's death.
Meantime let wonder seem familiar,"  (see the comment below for explanation)
    Much Ado About Nothing 5.4.67-70

"Feed yourselves with questioning
That [with] reason wonder may diminish"
   As You Like It 5.4.137-8

And now Bacon:
"Make wonders plain, not plain things wonders."
   Natural History
"Wonder (which is the seed of knowledge)
... wonder, which is broken knowledge"
   The Advancement of Learning
"After wondering men begin to philosophise"
  The Promus 227

Cockburn's comment:
"Bacon stresses the point that wonder leads us to knowledge. He describes wonder as "broken knowledge" because if our knowledge were whole we would no longer wonder. Shake-speare too stresses the progression from wonder to knowledge. An author who did not have Bacon's conceit in mind would be unlikely to express himself as in the three Shake-Speare texts. Line 70 in Much Ado means "treat these surprises as natural matters" - because their wonder was about to be converted into knowledge."