Promus - 17 Romeo and Juliet - Art of forgetting

Part 2 - Parallels between Bacon's Promus and Romeo and Juliet
(with special emphasis on Promus Folio 112)

Part 2k

R&J  Act 2.3.27-42

 (As Romeo walks home from his balcony scene with Juliet, he comes across Friar Lawrence).    

Referring now to the line [34] by Friar Lawrence:

"Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign."

From Bacon's Promus entry 1207 (Folio 112):

"Albada; golden sleep"

Comment: "Golden sleep" echoes the same expression in above line by the Friar. "Albada" becomes relevant later, which will be explained.

And from Promus entry 1227 (Folio 112):

"Well to forget"

Comment:  We have already discussed this entry in connection with Romeo and Juliet lingering after saying goodnight. We have seen also two entries about the "Art of forgetting". Earlier in the play, 1.1.223-4 & 235, this exchange had occurred

Benevolio:  Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her [Rosaline]
Romeo:      O teach me how I should forget to think.
                  ...
                 Farewell, thou cans't not teach me to forget.

This looks like another attempt to apply the Art of forgetting. It was unsuccessful then, but Romeo had evidently succeeded by 2.3.42 where he tells the Friar: "I have forgot that name [Rosaline] and that name's woe".

To summarize this point, Promus entries 114 and 1227 are "Well to forget"; entry 403 is "The Art of forgetting"; and entry 1168 is "Art of forgetting". The wisdom sometimes of forgetting things is a Shake-Speare theme. It appears not only in Romeo And Juliet, but also in As You Like It 1.2.3-6: "Unless you teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me to remember any extraordinary pleasure". So it seems that both Bacon and Shake-Speare regarded forgetting as an art which could be taught. See also The Winter's Tale 5.1. There Leontes is tortured by the belief that he has killed Hermione. Cleomenes advises him: "Do as the Heavens have done, forget you evil; / With them, forgive yourself".

Promus - 19 Romeo and Juliet - bonjouir Romeo

Part 2 - Parallels between Bacon's Promus and Romeo and Juliet
(with special emphasis on Promus Folio 112)

Part 2M

Note to readers:  This is a very technical post (and there will be a few more in the 'Was Shake-Speare a Lawyer' posts). Plus it will be another long one and I'm not even going to try to abridge or break it up or even simplify it for anyone, except a little. But I hope there are a few readers at least that will work it through to understanding and become part of a very small group of people in the world to know it - considering how difficult it is to obtain a copy of Cockburn's book and then having the interest and motivation to plow through a great deal of difficult scholarly material in it.

Keep in mind that in Elizabethan spelling the letters i and j were sometimes interchangeable and so an 'i' then is now often a 'j'; and that a 'y' could substitute for an 'i'. Also, know that there were 4 main quartos for Romeo And Juliet (Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4) prior to the First Folio.

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R&J  Act 2.4.37-57

(Romeo, from his meeting with Friar Lawrence, comes across Benvolio and Mercutio who believe him to have spent the night with Rosaline, they being ignorant of his switch to Juliet):

 Ben.  Here comes Romeo! here comes Romeo!
 Mer.  Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art
          thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed
          in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench (marry, she had a
          better love to berhyme her), Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy,
          Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, This be a gray eye or so,
          but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bonjour! There's a French
          salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit
          fairly last night.
  Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?
  Mer.  The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?
  Rom. Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a
           case as mine a man may strain courtesy.
  Mer.  That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a
           man to bow in the hams.
  Rom. Meaning, to curtsy.
  Mer.  Thou hast most kindly hit it.

Bacon's Promus entry 1195 (Folio 112):

"bon iouyr. Bon iour; (bridgrome)"          [or with modern spelling "bonjouir. Bonjour: (bridegroom)"]

Comment:  "your French slop" means "your baggy French style trousers". The Shake-Speare lines are full of sexual puns which are explained in the Arden edition. To give one example, the editor notes on "bow in the hams": "The ham is the back of the thigh, bent in curtsying; but there is also the bawdy innuendo that Romeo's sexual exertions make him unable to stand up straight".

The important words for our purposes are those in Promus entry 1195. Why should Bacon regard "bonjour" as a suitable salutation for a bridegroom?  The explanation lies in "bon iouyr", i.e. "bonjouir". The reason Bacon repeats "bonjouir" and "bonjour" in different spellings is to indicate a bawdy pun. The French noun "jeu" means "play", and the verb  form "jouir" means "to enjoy". A special meaning of "jouir" is "to have an orgasm" -- see the Robert Collins French Dictionary 1987. So "bonjouir" to a bridegroom means "good fornication".

Now, Q.1 of 1597 spells the word "bon iour". But that was a pirated Quarto with a corrupt text. Q.2 of 1599, a good text, substitutes "Bonieur". The Arden editor, puzzled, notes (p. 20): "Q.2's Bonieur is italic, has a capital, is undivided and misreads / misprints e for o; this seems such a complex deviation from Q.1 that a manuscript form is a preferable explanation".

Be that as it may, the substitution of e for o was probably deliberate, to indicate the pun which Q.1 had ignored, and the italics may have been used for the same purpose--to emphasize the pun. Shake-Speare may have decided that "bonjeur" would sound the same on the stage as "bon jeu" - "good play". And French speaking members of the audience who understood the pun would know from the context what sort of play was meant. Q.3 (1609), a reprint of Q.2, has "Bon ieur", both words in italics. Q.4 (1622) which is mostly a reprint of Q.3, has "Bonieur" in italics. The First Folio (1623) has "bonjour". But by then the pun may have been lost sight of.

One need have little doubt that Shake-Speare intended this pun in the play. As noted, the whole passage is alive with sexual puns, laughing at Romeo over his supposed night of passion with Rosaline. True, a French salutation to Italian Romeo could be explained by his French trousers. He may have worn them as his masking dress at the Capulet Ball the previous night and he had not been home since. But there was little point in Shake-Speare alluding to them except as an excuse for a bawdy "bonjouir" type greeting.

The presence of "bonjour" on Folio 112 and in the play is something of a coincidence by itself. But the aptness of the bawdy pun to Romeo's situation makes the parallel very telling indeed.

Shake-Speare uses "bonjour" on only two other occasions, and each time in the context of play, in one case sexual play. In Titus Andronicus (c.1593) 1.1.486-93 the Roman Emperor Saturninus is about to marry Tamora, Queen of the Goths, and Bassianus is to marry Titus's daughter Lavinia. One part reads:

Sat:   Come, if the emperor's court can feast two brides
         You are my guest Lavinia, and your friends.
         This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.
Tit:     To-morrow, and it please your majesty,
         To hunt the panther and the hart with me,
         With horn and hound we'll give your grace bonjour.

"Bonjour" in ancient Rome was an utter anachronism, and the word has obviously been dragged in for a purpose. Again it may be taken as a pun on "bonjouir" or "bon jeu", wishing the imperial bridegroom good sex play in his marriage, though the word is spelt in the ordinary way in every edition. Even if Shake-Speare did not intend his audience to understand a pun here, it seems that in his mind he associated "bonjour" with sex play, even in ancient Rome.

Then, in As You Like It (c.1599) 1.2.84-92 Rosaline and Celia make fun of Le Beau, a courtier attending on Duke Frederick:

Celia:      Bon jour Monsieur Le Beau. What's the news?
Le Beau:  Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport.
Celia:      Sport? Of what colour?

The sport in question was a wrestling match. To greet Le Beau with "bon jour" was natural since he was a Frenchman and the play is set in France. So "bonjour" is probably not intended as a pun here, but at least Shake-Speare uses it in the context of sport.

The "bonjouir" or "bonjeu" pun is unlikely to have been a familiar one in English literature since no commentator seems to have spotted it. But Bacon may have heard it during his time in France. It seems ironic that a smutty pun in the "Great Philosopher"s private notebook should provide an insight into the authorship of the Shake-Speare works. Folio 112 may have a number of other bawdy puns, most of which probably won't be discussed and which have been overlooked even by Bacon's main biographer--Spedding.

Parallel - Wonder and Knowledge

First Shake-Speare:

"Wonder on, till truth make all things plain."
  A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1.127

"All this amazement I can qualify,
when after that the holy rites are ended
I'll tell you largely of fair Hero's death.
Meantime let wonder seem familiar,"  (see the comment below for explanation)
    Much Ado About Nothing 5.4.67-70

"Feed yourselves with questioning
That [with] reason wonder may diminish"
   As You Like It 5.4.137-8

And now Bacon:
"Make wonders plain, not plain things wonders."
   Natural History
"Wonder (which is the seed of knowledge)
... wonder, which is broken knowledge"
   The Advancement of Learning
"After wondering men begin to philosophise"
  The Promus 227

Cockburn's comment:
"Bacon stresses the point that wonder leads us to knowledge. He describes wonder as "broken knowledge" because if our knowledge were whole we would no longer wonder. Shake-speare too stresses the progression from wonder to knowledge. An author who did not have Bacon's conceit in mind would be unlikely to express himself as in the three Shake-Speare texts. Line 70 in Much Ado means "treat these surprises as natural matters" - because their wonder was about to be converted into knowledge."

Parallel - Ducdame's Greek invocation explained

The Ducdame parallel

from Shake-Speare's As You Like It 2.5.47-56

Jacques sings or speaks the following song:

If it do come to pass
That any many turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame,
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
And if he will come to me.

The text continues:

Amiens:   What's that "ducdame"?
Jacques:  'Tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle.

now from Bacon: "It is a matter of common discourse of the chain of sciences how they are linked together, inasmuch as the Grecians, who had terms at will, fitted it of a name of Circle learning".
  Valerius Terminus or Of the Interpretation of Nature

Comment:  Jacque's answer has bemused editors to this day. To analyze some of the points, "ducdame" may be Gaelic for "Come to me". The conjunction of "Greek" and "fools" suggests that Shake-Speare may have had in mind the expression "foolish Greek" which he used in Twelfth Night 4.1.18 as slang for "silly merry-maker". "Merry Greek" was a familiar expression. But why does Jacques call the foolish Greeks into a "circle"? The Arden As You Like It editor thinks that Jacques may refer to the safe circle of Arden into which the Duke and his followers have retreated. More plausibly, she continues: "In stage performance the people to whom he is speaking often gather round him [Jacques], lured by his mysterious and portentious manner, only to break up in some discomfiture, as they realize that they have literally been drawn into a circle, and thus, in the manner of a playground joke, proved fools". Despite this possible explanation, I think it likely that Shake-Speare had (or had also) in mind the Greek Circle learning mentioned in the Bacon text (of which editors seem unaware). So erudite was Shake-Speare that if he thought of "Greek" and "circle", he would at once think of Greek Circle learning. Line 56 is then an ironic reference to that learning - instead of learned Greeks in a circle, there were "foolish Greeks" in a circle. Will Shakespere, incidentally, would hardly have made this connection. Shake-Speare cannot have derived Greek Circle learning from Valerious Terminus which was written later than the play.