Parallels - Weep to have - 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).

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).

Parallel - Nature's Audit

Shake-Speare:

"She [Nature] may detain, but not still keep her treasure.
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,"

 Sonnet 126, 10-11

and, Bacon: "Men should frequently call upon Nature to render her account.
   Cogitationes de Natura Rerum

Parallel - Slander as a Crow

First, Shake-Speare:

 "[Slander] is a crow that flies".

Sonnet 70, line 4

And, Bacon: "Fame hath swift wings, especially that which hath black feathers [i.e. slander or ill repute]".

Parallel - Weeping through Fear of Loss

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,

Merchant of Venice 3.2.27-9

Now, Bacon:

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

and also: 

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).

Parallel - Vanity with Gracious

First, Shake-Speare:

"Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,"

 Sonnet 62, 1-5

now Bacon:

"Neither had the fame of Cicero, Seneca, Plinius Secundus, borne her age so well, it it had not been joined with some vanity in themselves; like varnish that maketh ceilings not only shine but last. In some persons [this] is not only comely but gracious.

Comment:  Personal vanity collocated with "gracious".

Parallel - Katherine Sad and Religious

First, Shake-Speare:

Katherine:   My soul grows sad with troubles
             .....
             Pray do my service to his Majesty;
             He has my heart yet and shall have my prayers
             While I shall have my life.

Henry VIII, 3.1.1 and 179-81

and now Bacon:

"And the Lady Katherine herself (a sad and religious woman) long after, when King Henry the Eight his resolution of a divorce from her was first made known to her, used some words that she had not offended, but it was a judgment of God.
   History of Henry VII

Comment:  Our authors, unlike Holinshed, both describe Katherine as "sad" and depict her as religious.

Parallel - Obeying in Commanding

First Shake-Speare:

(Henry VIII pays tribute to his wife Katherine after he has discarded her in favour of Anne Boleyn):

"Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
Obeying in commanding"

 Henry VIII 2.4.138-9

now Bacon: "We cannot command nature except by obeying her".
    Novum Organum

Comment: This may be derived from Publilius Syrus of the 1st century B.C. who wrote that a wife governs her husband by obeying him. But was it common in Elizabethan literature?

Parallel - Mountaineers with Throats like Wallets

First, Shake-Speare:

                   "When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em
Wallets of flesh"?

The Tempest  3.3.45-7

And, Bacon: "Snow water is held unwholesome; inasmuch as the people that dwell at the foot of the snow mountains, or otherwise upon ascent, especially the women, by drinking snow water have great bags under their throats.
    Natural History

Comment: The Variorum editor points out that in Roman times, as we know from Juvenal Satire xiii.168, the Swiss were reputed to suffer form goitre. But he does not think that Shake-Speare's "wallets of flesh" would be an apt description of goitre. So he suggests that he was referring to some different people known as Satires who, according to medieval travellers' tales, had pouches of flesh beneath their throats and carried their meat in them. In fact, Shake-Speare's "mountaineers" shows that he was referring to the Swiss and other mountain dwellers, just as Bacon was. Whether or not "wallets of flesh" was an apt description, it is how Shake-Speare and Bacon ("great bags hanging under their throats") both conceived the matter.

Parallel - Free as Mountain Winds

First, Shake-Speare:

Prospero: "Thou shalt be as free
           as mountain winds".

The Tempest  1.2.499-500

Now, Bacon: "Inquire into the nature of the winds, whether some are not free...What do mountains contribute to them"?
      An aide-memoire by Bacon in his History of Winds

Comment:  How many authors wanting a simile for freedom would think of mountain winds? But the topic was evidently of interest to Bacon and Shake-Speare.

Parallel - Flower de luces

First Shake-Speare:

(Perdita in her list of flowers includes):

"Lilies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one".

 The Winter's Tale 4.4.74ff

Next, Bacon:

"Flower-de-lices & lilies of all natures".
   Essay on Gardens

[Of landscaping at Gorhambury] "The border to be set with flags of all sorts of flower de Luces and lilies".
   Commentarius Solutus

Comment: All three passages couple flower-de-luces and lilies, and add of "all kinds", "all natures" or "all sorts". Spedding commented: "The scene in the 'Winter Tale' where Perdita presents the guests with flowers suited to their ages, has some expressions which, if this Essay had been contained in the earlier editions [it was not published till 1625] would have made me suspect that Shake-Speare had been reading it".  In fact, I can see no significant parallel apart from the one I have identified. But one should perhaps add that 64 of the flowers, trees and shrubs mentioned in Bacon's short Essay also appear in the Shake-Speare works.

Parallel - Vice Graced by Constancy

First, Shake-Speare:

                        "For even to vice
They [women] are not constant, but are changing still;
One vice, but of a minute old, for one
Not half so old as that".

 Cymbeline 2.4.180-3

"It is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking".

Measure For Measure 3.2.215

Now, Bacon: "Constancy is the foundation on which virtues rest...Even vices derive a grace from constancy."
   De Augmentis

Comment:  The elevation of constancy as the foundation of virtues is a little odd. Odder still is the view, apparently shared by Shake-Speare, that constancy mitigates
vices. Note too the collocation of "even to vice" / "even vices".

Parallel - Telepathy in Prayer

First Shake-Speare:

Imogen: "I did not take my leave of him but had

Most pretty things to say: ere I could tell him
How I would think on him at certain hours,
....
                  or have charg'd him,
At the 6th hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,
T'encounter me with orisons [prayers], for then
I am in heaven for him.

 Cymbeline 1.4.25-33

Now, Bacon:  [writing of telepathy] "Some trial should be made whether pact or agreement do anything: as if two friends should agree that on such a day in every week, they, being in far different places, should pray one for another, or should put on a ring or tablet, one for another's sake". [Reference missed]

Comment: The Arden editor notes on the Shake-Speare lines: "The times mentioned are three of the seven canonical hours of the Divine Office. The obvious interpretation is that Imogen sees herself as a goddess whom Posthumus is to worship at certain hours, but I doubt whether it is the correct one. I take 'encounter me' to mean 'join me'...and would interpret: 'I would have charged him to join with me in prayer at these times because I shall then be praying for him'".  Yes. but the editor might have had no doubt about it if he had known the Bacon passage. Even the "ring or tablet" is echoed by Shake-Speare. Imogen, one the eve of her husband Posthumus's departure for Italy, gives him a ring ("This diamond was my mother's; take it, heart" - 1.1.43); and Posthumus gives her a bracelet - 1.1.52-4

Parallel - Laws as Nets; Gangrene laws

Note: some of this is also found in a Measure for Measure post (#7):

First, Shake-Speare:

"A fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law."
  Pericles 2.1.117-8

"We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear [frighten] the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror".
  Measure For Measure 2.1.1-4

Now Bacon:
 "There are no worse snares than legal snares...they are as nets in the path".
  De Augmentis

"...purge out the multiplicity of the laws, clear the uncertainty of them, repeal those that are snaring"

Gray's Inn Revels

"...so new judgments avoid the former. The records reverent things, but like scarecrows".
Notes for a speech 1610

"Obsolete laws that are grown into disuse".
  De Augmentis

Obsolete laws, if not cut away from the general body of the law, "bring a gangrene, neglect, and habit of disobedience upon other wholesome laws, that are fit to be continued in practice and execution".
  Life, vi. p. 65

"For as an express statute is not regularly abrogated by disuse, it happens that from a contempt of such as are obsolete, the others also lose part of their authority, whence follows that torture of Mezentius whereby the living laws are killed in the embraces of the dead ones".
  De Augmentis

Shake-Speare again:
   "In time the rod
Becomes more mocked than feared; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks justice by the nose".
  Measure for Measure 1.3. 26-28

Bacon: "Above all things a gangrene of the law is to be avoided"     [body metaphor applied to law]
  De Augmentis (because the law being once gangrened is no longer respected.)

Shake-Speare:

The same is true of the body:
    "The service of the foot
Being once gangrened, is not then respected
For what before it was"
  Coriolanus 3.1.305

"This fester'd joint cut off, the rest rests sound;          [same principle as applied to the general laws]
This let alone will all the rest confound".
  Richard II, 5.3.84-5

Cockburn comments: Thus both authors see legal obstacles as "nets". On several other occasions too Bacon describes laws as "snares" which is tantamount to calling them "nets". Both authors also see obsolete laws as "scarecrows", which like "gangrene laws" are "dead to infliction" and no longer respected. Bacon waged a long campaign for the repeal of obsolete laws, and in his speech note he meant the same as Shake-Speare, namely, that obsolete laws, however revered, in time lose their power to frighten. The "scarecrow" metaphor is a far from obvious one - in the whole of my time at the English Bar I never heard anyone describe obsolete laws as scarecrows.

Note: The reform of the law was as close to Bacon's heart as the reform of learning. He greatly admired the laws of England, saying 'the equallest in the world between prince and people', and all the richer for being 'mixed and compounded', like the English language, of the customs of so many nations. But England had been rapidly developing from a simple agrarian community into an increasingly complex mercantile society, and the law had not followed suit. There had been for over a century, wrote Bacon, a 'continual heaping of laws without digesting them', and such an accumulation of 'cross and intricate' statutes on the same subject that 'the certainty of the law was lost in the heap'. How could the citizen be made 'more and more happy' - which was 'the end and scope of laws' - when left in so much uncertainty about their application?

  Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination, Nieves Mathews 1996

Parallel - Interpretation of the Time

Shake-Speare:

"So our virtues

Lie in th' interpretation of the time".

Coriolanus 4.7.49-50

Bacon: "The times which in many cases give great light to true interpretations".
   The Advancement of Learning

Parallel - Chasing a Gilded Butterfly

First, Shake-Speare:

"I saw him run after a gilden butterfly; and when he caught it he let it go again, and after it again, and over and over he comes, and up again, catch'd it again..."
Coriolanus  1.3.60-63

Then, Bacon:


"...and if her Majesty will not take me, it may be selling by parcels will be more gainful. For to be, as I have told you, a child following a bird, which when he is nearest flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so on ad infinitum...." Letter to Fulke Greville


Comment: The idea is the same, and both authors say "after it again".

Parallel - Hail and Pearls

First, Shake-Speare:

"I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail
Rich pearls upon thee".
  Anthony and Cleopatra 2.5.45-6

Now, Bacon: "Such difference as is between the melting hailstone and the solid pearl".
   Essex Device (1595)

Comment:  "Hail" collocated with "pearl" by both authors.

Parallel - Digestion and Appetite

First, Shake-Speare:

Macbeth (As the banquet is about to begin):

"Now, good digestion wait on appetite
And health on both!"
  Macbeth 3.4.37-8

Bacon:  "For the preservation of health the stomach should be in good appetite; because the appetite promotes digestion".
   History of Life and Death

Comment:  That good digestion depends on appetite seems a questionable notion - surely appetite is as likely to depend on good digestion. but once again we find Shake-Speare dragging in a Bacon theory on some matter of natural science.

Parallel - Sleep as Food-Nourishment

Shake-Speare:

"Sleep,  that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hur minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast;"
  Macbeth 2.2.37-40

Bacon: "The story goes that Epimenides slept many years in a cave without needing food; for in sleep the spirits are less predatory...As exercise demands more nourishment, so likewise sleep to a certain extent supplies it".
   History of Life and Death

"Sleep doth nourish much".
  Natural History

"Sleep nourisheth or at least preserveth bodies a long time without other nourishment".
  Natural History

Comment: Shake-Speare's "Chief nourisher in life's feast" is metaphorical - it is not dealing only with physical nourishment. The Arden editor notes on the line: "This may also have been suggested by an alternative meaning of ravell'd. Ravel, or ravelled, bread was whole meal bread and could be regarded as 'chief nourisher'". But it is less far-fetched to suppose it to have been suggested by Bacon's view of sleep (of which the editor makes no mention), especially as Bacon's dicta use the word "nourish".

Parallel - Air as the Seat of a house; Smells that 'woo'

First, Shake-Speare:

Duncan:  This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air
         Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
         Unto our gentle senses.
Banquo:               This guest of summer
         The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
         By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
         Smells wooingly here.

 Macbeth 1.6.1-6

Now, Bacon:  
"He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat committeth himself to prison. Neither do I reckon it an ill seat only where the air is unwholesome, but likewise where the air is unequal".
   Essay on Buildings

"I am much beholding to your highness's worthy servant Sir John Vaughan, the sweet air and loving usage of whose house hath already much revived my languishing spirits".
   Letter to Prince Henry

"But for the choice of places or seats, it is good to make trial not only of the aptness of air to corrupt but also of the moisture and dryness of the air".
   Natural History

"[Smells which are not too  strong] rather woo the sense than satiate it".
   Natural History

Comment:  Shake-Speare, and Bacon in two of his passages, describe the quality of the air as the "seat" of a house. Did anyone else? Both our authors speak of smells "wooing". Did anyone else?