Parallels - Ways Foul and Fair

Shake-Speare
 

Countess: Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth'd and calumnious knave?
 Clown:     A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way.
All's Well That Ends Well 1.3.55-6

and

[Lady Macbeth to Macbeth] Yes I do fear thy nature;
  It is too full o'th'milk of human kindness,
  To catch the nearest way.
Macbeth 1.5.16-18

Now, from Bacon:

"It is in actions as it is in ways; commonly the nearest is the foulest".
  Promus

"But it is in life as it is in ways; the shortest way is commonly the foulest"
  The Advancement of Learning

[Bacon speaking of himself] "Mr Bacon would say 'That it was in business as it is commonly in ways, and that if a man will go the fairest way, he must go somewhat about'."
  Apothegms

Comment by Cockburn: The aphorism stated in the three Bacon texts is not in M.P. Tilley's Proverbs and was not, I think, a proverb. If Bacon quoted a proverb of someone else, he usually so indicated. So it looks as if he himself first devised this aphorism in his Promus in 1594 or 1595, and later used it in two texts. Yet it underlies and explains both Shake-Speare texts. The Arden editor comments on the All's Well text: "the next way: the nearest way. Presumably the phrase glances at the theory of prophetic inspiration as proceeding from direct contact with the Divine Author of truth."  Yes; but the collocation of "foul-mouth'd" and "the next way" suggests that it also glances (even if the audience would not understand it) at the Bacon aphorism - the Clown was foul because he was direct. As to the Macbeth text, Lady Macbeth plainly means that her husband was not foul enough to do what was necessary the direct way.

Parallels - Troilus and Cressida 4 of 4

Troilus and Cressida    (a subgroup of four parallels)

(Part 4 of 4)

First, Bacon:
In his De Augmentis Bacon wrote:

"The second [rule] is to keep a discreet temper and mediocrity both in liberty of speech and in secrecy. For liberty of speech invites and provokes a similar liberty in others; and so brings much to a man's knowledge; but secrecy induceth trust, so that men like to deposit their secrets there, as in their own bosom".

Comment: So liberty in speech and secrecy in speech can both be used to draw people out. Remarkably, we find both these axioms illustrated in the same scene in the play. Now we find Shake-Speare having Cressida saying to Troilus:

"Sweet, bid me hold my  tongue,
For in this rapture I shall surely speak
The think I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth."
  Troilus And Cressida,  3.2. 128-132

And then a little later in the same scene, Cressida, again addressing Troilus, refers to the other tactic for drawing out another's thoughts:

"Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love,
And fell so roundly to a large confession
To angle for your thoughts."
  Troilus And Cressida, 3.2. 151-3

Comment: Shake-Speare could not have borrowed from Bacon since the play was written (but not published) about 1602, which was before De Augmentis (1623) (or The Advancement of Learning, 1605, which voiced similar sentiments) was published. And Bacon could not have borrowed from the published play because the Advancement of Learning was written before the play was published in 1609.

Cockburn adds that the last three of the these four parallels for Troilus And Cressida are each quite remarkable in themselves. They cannot be accidental  So, the set of four by themselves he would grant the status of proof of common authorship.

There seem to be at least four subsets of parallels that Cockburn believes reach the level of proof of common authorship between Bacon and Shakespeare.  

Parallels - Troilus and Cressida 3 of 4

Troilus and Cressida (a subgroup of four parallels)     (Part 3 of 4)

Shake-Speare:

"Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have gloz'd, but superficially - not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
The reasons you allege do more conduce
To the hot passion of distemper'd blood
Than to make up a free determination
'Twixt right and wrong."
  Troilus And Cressida  2.2.164-72

Bacon:
"Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded wherein he saith that young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy, because they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections [passions], nor attempered with time and experience."
   The Advancement of Learning

Comment: Actually, Aristotle said "political philosophy", not "moral philosophy", but the latter was the Elizabethan synonym for "political philosophy". Aristotle's opinion was probably quite well known, but it is surprising that Shake-Speare made Hector quote Aristotle by name. It is almost as though Bacon, writing the Shake-Speare lines, had forgotten for a moment that he was writing a play, not an Essay. However, the principal significance of this parallel lies in three similarities of wording:

(a) Bacon and Shake-Speare both use metaphors of heat - "the boiling heat of
their affections" and "the hot passion of distemper'd blood". Aristotle uses
no metaphor, saying simply that a young man is "swayed by his feelings".

(b) Only three pages earlier in The Advancement of Learning Bacon had used the
word "distempers", saying:

"Another article of this knowledge is the inquiry touching the affections [human passions]...in medicining of the mind, after knowledge of the divers characters of men's natures, it followeth, in order, to know the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of the affections...[8 lines later] And here again I find it strange, as before, that Aristotle should have written divers volumes of ethics, and never handled the affections, which is the principal subject thereof."

Comment cont. "The perturbations and distempers of the affections" echoes Shake-Speare's "the hot passions of distemper'd blood", "distempers" being used (like "distemper'd") in connection with human passions and with Aristotle.

(c) Shake-Speare's rather odd and prosaic expression "not much unlike" is used by
Bacon 19 pages earlier in the Advancement of Learning, and again in relation to Aristotle.
Speaking of "controversies wherein Moral Philosophy is conversant", he says that
one is whether the contemplative life is to be preferred, and adds that the
arguments for the contemplative life are "not much unlike" a certain argument which
Pythagoras advanced. Bacon uses "not much unlike" in at least 4 other of his
writings according to one of his biographers (Spedding). The expression is not
used elsewhere in Shake-Speare. Does it appear in other Elizabethan literature?
(Note: "not unlike" was a common expression and is not to be confused with "not much unlike").
 
Cockburn adds: "The conjunction of all these similarities cannot be accidental. Yet Shake-Speare cannot have borrowed from Bacon's The Advancement of Learning  which was not published until 1605, about three years after the play was written. And Bacon cannot have borrowed from the published play which did not come out till 1609."

Parallels - Troilus and Cressida 2 of 4

Troilus and Cressida (a subgroup of four parallels)   (2 of 4)

Shake-Speare:
(Hector favours the return of Helen to the Greeks to secure peace, and says:)

"Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I
As far as toucheth my particular,
Yet, dread Priam,
There is no lady of more softer bowels,
More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,
More ready to cry out "Who knows what follows?"
Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure [over-confidence]; but modest doubt [fear] is called
The beacon of the wise."
  Troilus And Cressida 2.2.8-16

Bacon:
"A young man's bowels are soft and succulent" [from the Latin Juveni viscere mollier et succulenta]
   History of Life and Death (1623)

"Doubt [fears] are so many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge."
  The Advancement of Learning (1605)

"Distrust is the sinews of wisdom"
  De Augmentis (1623)

Comment: Hector was a young man. And Shake-Speare associates "softer" and "suck" and "spongy" with bowels and with fear, as Bacon associates "soft" and "succulent" with bowels and "spongy" with "doubts" [fears]. The folly of over-confidence and the wisdom of modest fear were commonplaces, but this parallel derives its force from their combination in both authors with the striking verbal similarities noted.

(Sidenote: I've read also that in Elizabethan times the word "beacon" could be pronounced like "Bacon" - for what it's worth)

Parallels - Troilus and Cressida 1 of 4

A special set of Shake-Speare and Bacon parallels

Troilus and Cressida (a subgroup of four parallels from this play)

(1 of 4)

Shake-Speare:
"As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infects the sound pine and diverts his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth." 
   Troilus and Cressida 1.3.7-10

Bacon:
"There be divers herbs, but no trees, that may be said to have some kind of order in the putting forth of their leaves; for they have joints  or knuckles, as it were, stops in their germination. The cause whereof is for that the sap ascendeth unequally, and doth as it were tire and stop by the way. And it seemeth they have some closeness and hardness in their stalk which hindereth the sap from going up, until it hath gathered into a knot."
  A Natural History

Comment: Thus both authors attribute knots to a conflux of sap. Bacon is speaking of herbs, not trees, in so far as order in the putting forth of leaves is concerned. But he would presumably have given the same explanation for knots in trees since their hardness is even more likely to hinder the sap from going up. Does any other Elizabethan dramatist show the slightest interest in the cause of knots in trees or plants? Chronologically Bacon could have borrowed from the published play (1609).

Hamlet's souce - Saxo Grammaticus

At the following website you can read about the Hamlet quartos.

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/playhamlet.html

You can also read there the following under the section of Shakespeare's sources:

"Saxo Grammaticus, Danorum Regum Heroumque Historiae (1514). Although this contains all the principal elements of Shakespeare’s plot, it is unlikely that he knew Saxo’s work at first hand."

So it's interesting that Bacon cites this work in the French edition of his Natural History (1631):

“In fact, I have only remarked on a single example of such a marvel, and that is in The History of Denmark, a book written by Saxo Grammaticus, who relates a veritable history that during the reign of King Ericius there arrived at the Court of Denmark a musician very skilled in his profession, who boasted that he could produce the feelings of joy or sadness, of peace or rage, in the breasts of man, by the mere sound of music”.

So readers should consider that maybe 'Shake-Speare' (i.e. Bacon) likely did know of Saxo's work first hand.

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 more on Saxo's work:

http://www.polybiblio.com/quaritch/C1001.html

SOURCE FOR HAMLET

SAXO GRAMMATICUS. Danorum Regum heroumque historiae. Paris, Iodocus Badius Ascensius, 1514.
Folio, [8], 198 leaves, roman letter, title printed in large red gothic characters within a renaissance style architectural border in black and red enclosing a woodcut of the Danish king at the head of his army; fine woodcut initials including several specially designed for the book incorporating a portrait of the king of Denmark and the royal arms, etc.; a few inoffensive wormholes throughout, but a clean, crisp copy, bound with two other works (see below) in 17th century blindstamped calf, rebacked in the early 19th century with an attractively gilt spine with green and tan morocco labels.

Rare first edition of this famous history of Denmark, important textually because no complete manuscript version now survives. It was edited by Christiernus Petri, a Canon of Lund. His dedicatory epistle dated “ex Parahisiorum academia, 13.III.1514” is addressed to Lago Bishop of Ruskild. The great interest of the book lies in the fact that it was the principal source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

“As a chronicler both of truth and fiction he had in his own land no predecessor, nor had he any literary tradition behind him. Single-handed, therefore, he may be said to have lifted the dead-weight against him, and given Denmark a writer” (Elton, introduction to Saxo Grammaticus). The History is composed from a variety of sources: “Saxo was to Denmark what Geoffrey of Monmouth was to Britain. He drew on Latin histories such as Bede and Adam of Bremen, on Icelandic and Danish MSS. and on oral traditions ... The Amleth saga belongs to a common type of revenge-story in which the hero feigns insanity or stupidity to save his life and gain an opportunity for a coup” (Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare).


The Amleth story agrees in the main points of its narrative with Shakespeare’s Hamlet: a king is murdered by his brother, who marries the widow and succeeds to the throne. The son of the murdered king feigns madness, whereupon he is suspected and tried, first by entangling him in his love of a maiden (Ophelia), and second by an interview with his mother, during which he discovers and kills a spy (Polonius). The king sends him to Britain in charge of two attendants (Rosencrantz and Guilderstern) with a letter asking for his assassination. He alters the letter so the attendants are slain. Returning to Denmark he kills the courtiers, burns the palace, and slays the king. As Bullough points out, there were considerable changes of plot and emphasis in Shakespeare’s version: “At some stage, the saga already somewhat modernized by Belleforest was brought into line with Renaissance manners and current tales of court-murders and revenge. This involved changing the ending by having Hamlet achieve his vengeance during a fencing match. It also meant altering the way in which Old Hamlet was killed, and the Ghost’s part was made important by substituting the Italianate secret way of poison for open murder at a banquet ... Neither in Saxo or Belleforest did the wicked uncle show any sign of remorse, and the introduction of the prayer scene indicates that the play had religious implications not present in the old saga ...” (ibid.).

Parallels in Hamlet - To Be or Not To Be

The following is comparison between Bacon and Shakespeare is from Barry Clarke, an author of logic puzzles, also of a book on the Shakespeare authorship question, and also one of the notable signatories on the DoubtAboutWill Declaration:

https://www.doubtaboutwill.org/signatories/notable

Barry's book The Shakespeare Puzzle can be downloaded from here:


http://barryispuzzled.com/shakpuzz.pdf

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Here is a new comparison between the work of Bacon and the famous Hamlet speech which predates Bacon’s major publications. Bacon is the only authorship candidate who can be demonstrated to have had the necessary vocabulary and figures to compose this piece.

Hamlet. … The Slings and Arrowes of outrageous Fortune
… ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d …
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppressors wrong, the poore man’s Contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
…When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
… And makes us rather beare those illes we have
Than flye to others that we know not of.
… And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their Currants turne away,
And lose the name of Action …
(1600-01 Hamlet, Scene 3, Act 1)

Let us now compare this with Francis Bacon’s published work.

"… and ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts [a] from thee have pierced me;" (April 1621 Prayer in Lord Bacon’s first will [1])     

Key : (a) arrows: Marcius. "Filling the air with swords advanced and darts" (1608 Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene 6)

"… the condition of man is mortal and exposed to the blows of fortune"
(1623 De Augmentis Scientarium [2])

"… others regarding it [childlessness] as the crown and consummation of felicity …" (1608 Felicem Memoriam Elizabethae [3])

"For with this state of mind there is commonly joined an indisposition to appear much in public or engage in business; because business would expose then to many neglects and scorns, by which their minds would be dejected and troubled." (1609, Wisdom of the Ancients [4])

"It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely [a] : and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity … And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men." (1625 Of Superstition [5])    Key : (a) insulting language

"First, for the causes or parties that sue. ‘There be’ (saith the Scripture) ‘that turn judgment into wormwood’; and surely there be also that turn it into vinegar; for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays make it sour."
(1625 Of Judicature [6])

There is no justification for classifying the following example as commonplace.

"Your two last acts which you did for me, in procuring the releasement of my fine and my Quietus est, I do acknowledge were effects real and material of your love and favour;" (Bacon's 1621 Letter to the Marquis of Buckingham [7])

"… a man might wish to die, not only from fortitude or misery or wisdom, but merely from disgust and weariness of life …" (1623 De Augmentis Scientarium [8])

"Revenge triumphs over death; Love slights it; Honour aspireth to it; Grief flieth to it;"  (1625 Of Death [9])

"But in enterprises, pursuits and purposes of life there is much variety"
(1623 De Augmentis Scientarium [10])

"… for Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of sciences;" (1605 Advancement of Learning [11])

"… to place as it were before the eyes … the courses and currents of actions"
(1623 De Augmentis Scientarium [12])

"And when a small river runs into a greater, it loseth both the name and stream." (1603 A Brief Discourse touching the Happy Union of the Kingdom of England and Scotland [13])

By way of comparison, Shake-speare’s nearest rival as a poet was Ben Jonson and in his Timber: Or Discoveries (1641), a work of some 33,000 words, he makes use of four of the above: “… it shall not fly from all humanity”[14]; “… if refused [coining of new word], the scorn is assured”[15]; “… these styles [of languages] vary, and lose their names”[16]; and “… as if the contumely respected their particular …”[17]. However, the first two examples appear in Bacon’s Essays which Jonson assisted in translating into Latin before the Timber appeared, and they all appear in Shake-speare’s First Folio (1623), the publication of which appears to have involved Benjamin Jonson.

[1] Bacon, Francis, “Of Gardens”, in Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625), Francis Bacon The Major Works (Oxford University Press : 2002), p.430
[2] Spedding 5.230
[3] Bacon, Francis, De Augmentis Scientarium, Book VII (1623) Chap II, p.1
[4] Spedding 6.310, English translation
[5] Spedding 6.705
[6] Bacon, Francis, “Of Superstition”, in Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625), Francis Bacon The Major Works (Oxford University Press : 2002), p.373
[7] Bacon, Francis, “Of Judicature”, in Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625), Francis Bacon The Major Works (Oxford University Press : 2002), pp.446-447
[8] Spedding 14.316
[9] Bacon, Francis, De Augmentis Scientarium, Book VII (1623) Chap. II, p.11
[10] Bacon, Francis, “Of Death”, in Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625), Francis Bacon The Major Works (Oxford University Press : 2002), p.343
[11] Bacon, Francis, De Augmentis Scientarium, Book VII (1623) Chap. II, p.11
[12] Bacon, Francis, Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon The Major Works, (Oxford University Press : 2002), p.234
[13] Spedding 4.302
[14] Spedding 10.98
[15] Jonson, Benjamin, Timber: or Discoveries made upon men and matter (Cassell : 1889), p.53; first published in 1641 four years after Jonson died
[16] Ibid., p.113
[17] Ibid., p.120