Measure for Measure 4 - Place, Bottom

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (4)

Shake-Speare:

Duke: “I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes; Though it do well, I do not relish well their loud applause and aves vehement; Nor do I think the man of safe discretion that does affect it”.

Measure for Measure,1.1.67

Bacon:

“I wish you to take heed of popularity. A popular judge is a deformed thing, and plaudites are fitter for players than for magistrates.”

Life and Letters, 6.p 211

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Shake-Speare:

Escalus to Angelo: “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,1.1.78

Angelo replying to Escalus: “Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together and we may soon our satisfaction have TOUCHING that point”.

Measure for Measure, 1.1.81-83

Bacon:

“. . .he complained to my Lord Chancellor of the troublesomeness of his PLACE;”

Works 7.p.170  (Spedding et al.)

“Embrace and invite helps and advices TOUCHING the execution of thy PLACE”.

Essay “Of Great Place”

Common word usage - BOTTOM.

“the BOTTOM of his danger” Bacon’s History of Henry VII.

“the BOTTOM of your business” Bacon in Works 7. p.170 (Spedding et al.)

See also Troilus and Cressida 2.2.17  "To th' bottom of the worst"

Titus Andronicus 2.3.262  "Now to the bottom ..."

All’s Well That Ends Well 3.7.29  "The bottom of your purpose:

Romeo and Juliet 3.5.198    "That sees into the bottom of my grief?"

Parallel - Busy when Alone

First, Shake-Speare:

I, measuring his affections by my own,
Which most are busied when they're most alone.
Romeo And Juliet Q.1, 1.1.124-5

Bacon: His Majesty is never less alone than when he is alone.
Letter to Villiers

Comment: A very similar paradox, probably based on a dictum by Publius Scipio
-See The Tempest 3.1.15 and the Arden footnote where Ferdinand is more refreshed
the more he works while thinking of Miranda

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;"

Parallels on Love and Chaos

Parallels on Love and Chaos
(And just a reminder here that "Shake-Speare" is not referring to the actor from Stratford, but to the author of the Shakespeare works).

Shake-Speare:

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again.
  Venus and Adonis 1019

Vast sin-concealing Chaos, nurse of blame!
  The Rape of Lucrece  767

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
  Romeo And Juliet 1.1.177

But I do love thee, and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
  Othello 3.3.92-3

Now Bacon:

 " They say that this love [Cupid] was the most ancient of the gods and therefore of all things else, except Chaos which they held to be coeval with him. He is without any parent of his own but himself united with chaos begat the gods and all things...
  This Chaos then, which was contemporary with Cupid, signified the rude mass or congregation of matter...There was no efficient cause of it...consequently neither genus nor form...
   The ancients set down the first matter (such as may be the beginning of things) as having form and qualities, not as abstract, potential and unshapen...Chaos is without form."
The above quotes are from Bacon's Principles and Origins.

"Matter is not without a certain inclination and appetite to dissolve the world and fall back into the ancient Chaos; but that the overswaying concord of things (which is represented by Cupid or Love) restrains its will and effect in that direction and reduces it to order."
  The Wisdom of the Ancients

Cockburn Comments:  The Shake-Speare texts seem to have baffled Stratfordian scholars. Here are their attempts at explaining the idea of Chaos. The Variorum editor 

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variorum ) notes on the Othello text:

Chaos: JOHNSON: "When my love is for a moment suspended by suspicion, I have nothing in my mind but discord, tumult, perturbation and confusion". STEVENS: There is another meaning possible: "When I cease to love thee, the world is at an end", i.e, there remains nothing valuable or important. The first explanation [continues the Variorum editor] may be more elegant; the second is perhaps more easy. There is the same thought in Venus and Adonis (Line 1019):
      "For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
       And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again..."
FRANZ HORN: Othello refers to the chaos in his life before he knew Desdemona.

Cockburn comments continued: "Chaos" should have given modern scholars no difficulty, since the O.E.D. gives as one meaning of the word "The 'formless void' of primordial matter, the 'great deep' or 'abyss' out of which the cosmos or order of the universe was evolved". It cites several examples, including yet another text from Bacon (The Advancement of Learning): "The order and disposition of that Chaos or Mass was the work of 6 days". As to the relationship between Chaos and Love, that is explained by the  Bacon passages. Othello says that, if he stops loving Desdemonia, Chaos will come again because it is only love which converts Chaos into form. As to the Romeo And Juliet text, I know of no Stratfordian comment on it. But it is obviously a reference to the same ancient myth. The line is included in a list of impossibilities or contradictions. "Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!" is intended as a paradox, a contradiction in terms - chaos cannot have form. The ancient myth about Chaos and Love, and how it could be related to his philosophy, was a major preoccupation with Bacon. And he and Shake-speare even echo each other in language - "misshapen / unshapen". "form / form".

At long last one Stratfordian scholar at least has now cottoned on to the true explanation. The American editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare cites two references to the mythological relationship between Love and Chaos in two minor Ben Jonson works - Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly,  p. 26-7 and The Masque of Beauty, pp. 282-5 and 326-8. The Baconians have known the explanation for about 100 years. And there are the Bacon/Shake-Speare echoes in language mentioned. Plus, remember that Ben Jonson was a friend and translator of some of Bacon's works into Latin.

Bacon obviously did not borrow from Shake-Speare as the terms are part of the extensive philosophical thought of Bacon. And Shake-Speare (who evidently knew about Love and Chaos as early as Romeo And Juliet) cannot have borrowed from Bacon since both plays were written before either Bacon work was published.