Promus - 4 - Brown Wench

Parallels between Shake-Speare and Bacon's Promus

(c) a third explanatory parallel

from Shake-Speare's King Henry VIII, 3.2.295-6

                 "When the brown wench
Lay kissing in your arms, Lord Cardinal [Wolsey],"

and from Bacon's Promus (entry 1522):

"Fille brunette gay et nette"

Comment: The Arden editor notes on "brown wench": "probably a slut or an ill-favoured girl". But Cotgrave's Dictionary of the French and English Tongues (1611) gives the full French proverb as "Fille brunette est de nature gaye & nette" and translates it as "A nut-brown girl is neat and blithe by nature". Such a girl might perhaps be a slut, but not ill-favoured. Nor would Cardinal Wolsey's wench have been ill-favoured - he could take his pick. So Shake-Speare's "brown wench" is probably the "fille brunette" of the French jingle Bacon paraphrases in his Promus.

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?

Measure for Measure 16

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (16)

Shake-Speare:

Isabella: ” . . . Bidding the law make curtsy to their will; Hooking both right and wrong to th' appetite, ... ”

Measure for Measure, 2.4.175

(Complaining of Angelo’s use of his own discretion in interpreting laws.)

Also: “We must not rend our subjects from our laws and stick them in our will.” Henry VIII, 1.2.93

Bacon:

Bacon argues “no court of equity should have the right to decree contrary to a statute under any pretext of equity whatever, otherwise the judge would become a legislator,  and to have all things dependent upon his will.”

De Augmentis, 8.3.44

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Shake-Speare:

The Duke puts Angelo in power to test how this affects him and “to practise his judgment with the Disposition of Natures”. Measure for Measure, 3.1.165

(Thus to see if the judge’s robe changes Angelo’s purpose.)

Duke: “ . . . not changing heart with habit”. Measure for Measure, 5.1.381

Duke: “ . . .Hence shall we see, If power change purpose, what our seemers be”. Measure for Measure, 1.3.54

Likewise - “Sure this robe of mine does change my disposition”. Winter’s Tale 4.4.134

Bacon:

Bacon: “The raising of the fortune seldom mendeth the disposition,” and “that Vespasian alone of the emperors changed for the better”.  (after coming to power).

Advancement of Learning 2.22.5

“Unto princes and states, and especially towards wise senates and councils, the Natures and Dispositions of the people . . . ought to be . . . in great part clear and transparent”.

Advancement of Learning 2.23.48