The Bosphorus - Authorship of Othello

The Bosphorus

Will Shaksper is stated to have died on the 23rd April, 1616. The same year George Sandys published Journey, in which, referring to the Pontic sea, he says: "This sea is ....much annoyed with ice in the winter. The Bosphorus setteth with a strong current into Propontis."

Is it a coincidence that in the play of "Othello" in the First Folio, we find almost the same words? They read:

"Like to the Pontic sea whose icy current
.....keeps due on to the Propontic?'

Othello 3.3.451

These words could not have been used by Will Shaksper, who had died shortly after Sandy's book was published. They do not appear in the play of "Othello," published in quarto in 1622.   They first appeared in The First Folio of 1623. Is it also a coincidence that the two seas east and west of the Bosphorus are mentioned under similar names both by "Shakespeare" and Bacon? Shakespeare calling them "Pontic and Propontic," and Bacon in his treatise entitled "De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris," calling them "Pontus and Propontis?"

The Death of Desdemona - Authorship of Othello

The Death of Desdemona

Desdemona is smothered to death in bed by Othello. Within about half a minute, to judge by the ensuing dialogue between Othello and Emilia (to make sure that there will be no recovery), Othello again smothers Desdemona and she is pronounced by the dramatist to be dead. A few minutes elapse, when she suddenly speaks, utters several sentences that alternate with parts by Emilia and Othello, even to respond cogently to Emilia's question,  and then, no further violence having been offered her, expires for good..

The question therefore arises how could Desdemona have regained consciousness and power of speech not less than four minutes after the actual stroke of death had been inflicted on her and she had been pronounced by the dramatist to be dead? Various medical authorities have been consulted on this point, and they all agreed that if she had regained consciousness sufficiently to speak intelligently, as she did, recovery would have ensued. What could have induced the dramatist to narrate a circumstance so extraordinary and so contrary to all human experience? Is it possible that he ever investigated the possibility of so strange an occurrence?

Is it a coincidence that Francis Bacon in his Historia Vita et Mortis, printed a few months after Othello first appeared in the First Folio, tells us that he had been making enquirers as to how long one's physical and mental powers can act in certain directions after every sign of life has gone? And he mentions the report of a man who, when his heart had been torn out by the executioner, was heard to utter three or four words of prayer. Bacon was probably referring to the case of Babington, who, in 1586, engineered a conspiracy to murder Queen Elizabeth and who, on his heart being torn out, is reported to have muttered, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." "Shakespeare" tells us of a lady who spoke after she had for a long time been deprived of breath; Bacon tells us of a man who spoke after his heart had been torn out.

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Broadly speaking the Shakespeare Plays can be divided into two groups; those printed during Will Shakspere's lifetime, and those which first appeared in the Folio of 1623, seven years after his death in 1616. Othello falls into neither group. It was first printed in 1622, six years after William's death, and was re-printed next year in the Folio of 1623, completely revised, with 160 lines deleted, and with trifling verbal alterations throughout. The re-arrangement of the lines required no little skill and reveals the hand of the author in almost every scene.

Stratfordians maintain that all the shortcomings of the quarto text are due to stage "cuts." The word "all" is too sweeping and inhibits further enquiry. Cuts for the stage were probably made, but in this case there is clear evidence of extensive revision. Some of the new lines are the author's substitutions for lines deleted; some restore omissions which lead to an obvious non sequitor ; some are more polished elegancies of speech. Most important of all, some are really fine passages, newly interpolated, which no competent editor or producer would omit.

Martin Pares

http://www.sirbacon.org/othello.htm

The Bacon and Shakespeare Theory of Spirits - 5

The Bacon and Shake-Speare Theory of "spirits"

part 5 of 9 

(d)  the concept of vital spirits being seized

First, Shake-Speare:
      
from Romeo and Juliet 4.1.95-97

Quarto 1 says of the drug to be given to Juliet to put her into a sleep which feigns death:

"When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour which shall seize
Each and vital spirit".

Bacon in his History of Henry VII says of a pestilent fever:

"It seemeth not seated in the veins or humurs...only a malign vapour flew to the heart and seized the vital spirits; which stirred nature to strive to send it forth by an extreme sweat".

Did other writers speak of something "seizing the vital spirits"?  (The words "which shall seize each vital spirit" are omitted from the later Quartos and from the First Folio).

end of (d)
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(e)   inflamed spirits

from Shake-Speare's 2 Henry IV 4.3.92-4

Falstaff:  They are generally fools and cowards - which some of us would be
              too but for inflammation [i.e. excitement through drink].

Comments: In his Novum Organum Bacon says:

"Some opiates, when taken in moderation, do strengthen the spirits, render them more robust and check the useless and inflammatory motion [i.e. some opiates, if taken in moderation, do not excite unduly]".

The O.E.D. gives the Shake-Speare text as the first and only instance of "inflammation", meaning excitement through drink or drugs. But here Bacon uses "inflammatory" in the same sense. Further, in his History of Life and Death also Bacon three times speaks of the inflammation of the spirits, namely:

"And there is no question that the spirits most absorb and consume the body, so that a larger quantity of them or a greater inflammation and acrimony greatly shortens life".

"Next follows the inquiry for restraining the motions of the spirits, for motion evidently alternates and inflames them. This restraint is effected in three ways; namely by sleep, by avoiding strong labour, too much exercise and all fatigue, and by controlling uneasy affections [passions]".

"The vital spirit has in it a degree of inflammation and is like a breath compounded of flame and air".

A little later in the same speech from 2 Henry IV Falstaff links the vital spirits and the heart, as Bacon does in the Henry VII text above. In line 106 Falstaff says that one benefit of drinking sherry is that

"then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart; who great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage".

Thus Shake-Speare thinks of the natural science doctrine of vital spirits even when giving Falstaff a joke about drinking sherry.

end of (e)

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(f)  from Othello 23.273-5

"O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee Devil!"

Bacon in his Natural History wrote:

"Drunken men...reel, they tremble, they cannot stand nor speak strongly. The cause is, for that the spirits of the wine oppress the spirits animal and occupate part of the place where they are".

Here, Bacon, and apparently Shake-Speare, extend the theory of spirits to wine; Bacon being one of those, as we have seen who made the extension to inorganic bodies. And why does Shake-Speare call the spirit of wine "invisible"? Possibly in keeping with Bacon's view that the spirits were "altogether intangible and without weight" (to quote Spedding's summary).

end of  (f) and of part 5 of 9

More Promus - 1 - Poisonous minerals

Here is another short series of parallel ideas and phrases between Shake-Speare and Bacon. These Bacon writings are from his Promus notebook, the same from which the posts on Romeo and Juliet came from. The distinction that these Bacon entries have is that they all seem to have been devised by himself, rather than jotted down from another source.

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1.  from Bacon's Promus (entry 81) (and repeated in entry 1403).

"Mineral wits strong poison if they be not corrected".

Now Shake-Speare:

Othello 2.1.290-2 & 3.3.330-4

Iago:  For that I do suspect the lustful Moor

         Hath leap'd into my seat, the thought whereof

         Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards

..............................

         The Moor already changes with my poison;

         Dangerous conceits are in their nature poisons

         Which at the first are scarce found to distaste

         But with a little act upon the blood,

         Burn like the mines of sulphur

Comment:  I think Bacon meant the same as Iago; namely, that if you plant a disturbing thought in someone's mind, it will undermine him like a mineral poison. Bacon's "wits" must mean "thoughts".

More Promus - 5-6 - Ice boys; Ignorance

5. Bacon's Promus entry 828

"Puer glaciem"   "A boy [playing with] ice"; [from Adagia]

All's Well That Ends Well  2.3.93

"These boys are boys of ice; they'll none have her".

Comment:  According to Mrs. Pott, puer glaciem was "said of those who, though they cannot keep a certain thing, are unwilling to part with it";  e.g. boys who are reluctant to come in from the ice.  It looks as though Shake-Speare had the Latin tag in mind, but here makes it mean that they are frigid boys with no interest in Helena.  Thus he ironically inverts the usual meaning - instead of the boys wanting something, they do not want it.  Editors seem to have missed this Adagia echo.

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6.  Bacon's Promus entry 948    [I think these had been posted earlier but they're a good reread]

"Better unborn than untaught"  [from Heywood's Proverbs L.603]

2 Henry VI, 4.2.161

          "O gross and miserable ignorance!"

and 4.7.70-1

          "ignorance is the curse of God;

Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,"

Love's Labour's Lost  4.2.23

         "O! thou monster Ignorance"

King John 4.2.59

          "Barbarous ignorance"

Twelfth Night  4.2.43-4

          "There is no darkness but ignorance"

Troilus And Cressida  2.3.28-9

          "The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance"

Othello  3.3.410-11

           "....and fools as gross

As ignorance made drunk"

Comment: There are many other statements in Bacon's works on the supreme importance of knowledge. It was his passionate and life-long creed. And Shake-Speare seems to have shared it, probably more than other Elizabethan playwrights.

Promus - 2 - unbonneted

Parallels between Shake-Speare and Bacon's Promus

Part 2

This is a parallel which may explain a Shake-Speare text.

From Othello 1.2.21-4

Othello:               I fetch my life and being
          From men of royal siege, and my demerits [merits]
          May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
          As this that I have reached;

and from Bacon's Promus (entry 1538):

"Language de hauts bonnets ["Language of high bonnets"]

Comments: The Arden Othello editor notes on "unbonneted": "This must mean, in the context, 'without taking the bonnet off', i.e. 'on equal terms'". But it is difficult to make the adjective "unbonneted" mean "bonneted". The editor says "unbonneted" does not appear elsewhere in Shake-Speare, but in fact one finds it in Lear 3.1.13 where it is said of Lear "unbonneted he runs", which of course means "without his hat on". The Promus entry may explain Othello's reference to "unbonneted". Randle Cotgrave in his Dictionary of the French and English tongues (1611) translates the Promus phrase as: "An old wives tale; or a stale, obsolete or overworn language; a fashion of speaking that's old and quite out of fashion". So probably Othello meant: "My merits speak for themselves, without the need for formal or high-flown language". "Unbonneted" then relates to the type of language, not to whether he doffed his hat. The French phrase may have prompted Shake-Speare to use "unbonneted," a word he may have coined since till 1818 the O.E.D. (Old English Dictionary) gives no instance of it apart from the Lear text. In Coriolanus 2.2.25-8 he used "bonneted" to mean "doffed his hat to". There "bonneted" is the verb "bonnet", from the French verb "bonneter", with the meaning just stated. The O.E.D. gives no other instance of the verb "bonnet" till 1824. So Shake-Speare may have coined that verb too, from the French verb.

Parallel - Power and Place

First, Shake-Speare:


Escalus:                and it concerns me
              To look into the bottom of my place.
              A power I have but of what strength and nature
              I am not yet instructed.
Measure for Measure 1.1.77-80


also,      "My absolute power and place here in Vienna,  "
Measure for Measure 1.3.13


             "My spirit and my place have in them power, "
Othello  1.1.104


now Bacon: "Good thoughts ... are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act. And that cannot be without power and place."
Essay on Great Place (Spedding 6(2).399)


Comment:  This parallel is only worthwhile if the phrase was rare (which we do not know). Ben Jonson uses "place or power" in his Sejanus Act 5.612. It may have been the standard working of a commission.

Parallel - Harsh and Untunable

First Shake-Speare:

[of bad tidings] They are harsh and untunable and bad
The Two Gentlemen of Verona 3.1.208

It is the lark that sins so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Romeo And Juliet 3.5.27-8

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh
Hamlet 3.1.160

     then murder's out of tune 
And sweet revenge grows harsh
Othello 5.2.116-7

Now here are quotations from Bacon's works:

"They must needs, in respect of the opinions of the time, seem harsh and out of tune"   [Latin: duras et absonas].
Novum Organum (Spedding 4.52)

"A lute-string, if it be merely unequal in its parts, giveth a harsh and untunable sound."
Natural History 171 (Spedding 2.406)

"The government of the world and the more secret judgment of God sound somewhat harsh and untunable."
De Augmentis (Spedding 4.326)

"Harsh and untunable"
The Wisdom of the Ancients (Spedding 6(2).713)

Cockburn's comment: For the Hamlet text Q2 has "jangled out of time". The Arden editor in a long note says  "Either time or tune must be a minim error, but as both make excellent sense we cannot be certain which".
But the Bacon texts (of which the editor makes no mention) suggest, as do the other Shake-Speare texts, that Shake-Speare wrote "out of tune". The collocation of "harsh" and "untunable" (or "out of tune") seems not to have been found elsewhere, and so looks like a Bacon/Shake-Speare idiosyncrasy.

Note: My own search of Wisdom of the Ancients turned up in the chapter on "Pan, or Nature': "...sound harsh and dissonant to human ears or human judgment;"