The Bacon and Shakespeare Theory of Spirits - 6

The Bacon and Shake-Speare Theory of "spirits"

part 6 of 9 

(g)  the swelling of spirits which shortens life

First, Shake-Speare's Timon of Athens 3.5.101-4

The senators banish Alcibiades for ever, and the 1st Senator warns him:

"If after two days shine Athens contain thee,
Attend our weightier judgment.
And not to swell our spirit,
He shall be executed presently".

In other words, he shall be executed at once if he has not left Athens within two days. The Arden editor notes on "not to swell our  spirit": "There have been many emendations, most involving the substitution of "your" for "our". The Folio text may be interpreted satisfactorily if it is remembered that the "spirit" was often thought of as the seat of angry feeling (O.E.D.). So [the line means] "without giving further rein to our anger". The full and true meaning is, I think, provided by Bacon texts. For a start, we find Bacon using the terminology of spirits "swelling". In his Natural History he says:

"As for the cold, though it take hold of the tangible parts, yet as to the spirits, it doth rather make them swell than congeal them; as when ice is congealed in a cup, the ice will swell instead of contracting, and sometimes rift".

And in the same work he matches the Timon of Athens line with:

"Anger causeth...in some...swelling".

But why does the 1st Senator say: "And not to swell our spirit"? The reason, I suggest, is that he knew such swelling would damage the Senators' own health. In his History of Life and Death, when dealing with an analogous topic, Bacon wrote:

"We should likewise take care that a body fully nourished and not reduced by any of these spare diets, does not neglect a seasonable use of sexual intercourse, lest the spirits grow too full and soften and destroy the body".

"Lest the spirits grow too full" is of course tantamount to "Lest the spirits swell". And the grave consequence of passions damaging the spirits is emphasized again by another Bacon text. In his De Augmentis he wrote:

"The prolongation of life is to be expected rather from working on the spirits and from the softening of the parts than from the modes of alimentation. The spirits are immediately affected both by vapours and passions which have strange power over them".

In his History of Life and Death he wrote:

"The spirits most absorb and consume the body, so that a larger quantity of them or a greater inflammation and acrimony, greatly shortens life".

It looks then as though what the 1st Senator meant by "not to swell our spirits" was "not to shorten our own lives by prolonging our anger". At least, Shake-Speare had this idea in mind, even if it was above the heads of the Senators and his audience.

end of (g) and of part 6

Measure for Measure 8

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (8)

Shake-Speare:

Duke:  “ . . ;for we bid this be done, when evil deeds have their permissive pass and not the punishment”.

Measure for Measure, 1.3.37

“Tis necessary he should die;” for “Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.”

Timon of Athens, 3.5.3

Bacon:

“He who shows mercy to his enemy  denies it to himself”.

De Augmentis, 6.3. Antitheta

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Shake-Speare:

Lucio: “He (Angelo) ... hath pick’d out an act under whose heavy sense your brother’s life fall into forfeit”.

Measure for Measure, 1.4.62-64

Angelo: “Your brother is a forfeit of the law”. Measure, 2.2.71

Angelo: “It is the law not I condemns your brother”. Measure, 2.2.80

Isabel: “My brother had but justice In that he did the thing for which he died”. Measure, 5.1.445

(Why does Angelo make the above statements to Isabel? Surely to show her that his judgment was contained within the compass of the law.)

Bacon:

“Nor should a man lose his life without first knowing that he had forfeited it”.

Aphorism 39

Aphorism 46: “As that law is the best which leaves least to the discretion of the judge, so is that judge the best who leaves least to himself”. (De Augmentis, 8.3. and Aristotle, Rhet. I. I.)

Bacon: “The judge as long as his judgment was contained within the compass of the law was excused; the subject knew by what law he was to govern himself, and his actions; nothing was left to the judge’s discretion (Life and Letters, 3. Pp. 331-2)

Parallel - Forgiving Friends

Again from Shake-Speare:

"What vilder thing upon the earth than friends
Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!
How rarely [splendidly] does it meet with this time's guise
When man was wished to love his enemies!
Grant I may ever love, and rather woo
Those that would mischief me than those that do"!  

 Timon of Athens 4.3.466-71

Now Bacon: "Cosmus, Duke of Florence had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable: "You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies, but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends".
  Essay on Revenge

"Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends "That we read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends".
  from Bacon's "Apothegms"

Comment:  That friends are worse than enemies was probably a commonplace, but our authors both couple it with the ironic point that the injunction to love (or forgive) our enemies does not require us to love (or forgive) our friends.

Parallel - Friend as 'Another myself'

Again, Shake-Speare's Timon of Athens:

Flaminius says to Lucullus who claims to be a friend of Flaminius's master, Timon:
   "Thou disease of a friend, and not himself"!

 Timon of Athens  3.1.53

Bacon:  "A friend is another himself [i.e. a true friend of someone is so close to that person as to be indistinguishable form him. A dictum of classical origin]".
  Essay on Friendship

"Your King, whom he desires to make another himself, and to be one and the same thing with him".
  Bacon's  History of Henry VII

Comment:  The Arden editor interprets: "Lucullus is said to bear the same relation to a true friend ("himself") as a disease bears to a healthy body". This identifies 'himself' with Lucullus, if he had been a true friend. But on this reading the addition of "and not himself" is superfluous and flat. I have no doubt that Bacon's dictum point the true meaning which is that Lucullus is a disease upon Timon when he ought to be (if he were a true friend) Timon "himself".  Bacon called his friend Tobie Matthew "another myself".

Parallel - Love of dogs

More from Timon of Athens  

Alcibiades:  What art thout? Speak.
Timon:       A beast, as thou art.
             ...
             I am Misanthropos and hate mankind.
             For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog
             That I might love thee something.

 Timon of Athens  4.3.49-56

Bacon:  "A natural and secret hatred and aversion towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast.
   Essay on Friendship

  "The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man; insomuch that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless are kind to beasts and give alms to dogs and birds".
  Bacon's  Essay on Goodness and Goodness of Nature

Parallel - Sea of air

First, Shake-Speare:

One of Timon's servants says of the ruin of his house:

"Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery.
That see I by  our faces; we are fellows still
Serving alike in sorrow. Leak'd is our bark,
And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,
Hearing the surges threat; we must all part
Into this sea of air".

Timon of Athens 4.2.17-22

and now Bacon:  "Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea of air and to find the way from a field in flower a great way off to her hive"?

Comment:  "Sea of air" seems a surprising metaphor in both contexts. A different phrase considered odd by commentators is Hamlet's "Or to take arms against a sea of troubles" (in his "To be or not to be" speech 3.1.59). To "take arms" against a sea has been thought to be an inappropriate metaphor. But in his Apothegms Bacon said of the large army with which Charles VIII invaded Italy: "Caius Marius was general of the Romans against the Cimbers who came with such a sea of multitude upon Italy". So Bacon would presumably have thought it proper to say (if it had been historically true) that the people of Italy "took arms" against the sea. "Sea of multitude" reminds one incidentally of Shake-Speare's "multitudinous seas incarnadine" (Macbeth 2.2.61).

Parallel - Contempt of Self

In his De Augmentis Bacon wrote:

"Let pride go a step higher and from contempt of other rise to contempt of self, and it becomes philosophy".

Compare to Shake-Speare:

Apemantus:  Heavens, that I were a Lord!
Timon:          What woulds't do then, Apemantus?
Apemantus:  E'en as Apemantus does now; hate a Lord with all my heart.
Timon:          What, thyself?
Apemantus:  Aye.
  Timon Of Athens 1.1.226-31

So Apemantus would step from contempt of other lords to contempt of himself - and Apemantus is the philosopher of the play. As to borrowing, the play was first published in 1623 and De Augmentis in the same year.