Shakespeare a Lawyer? - 13 - Oath

Was Shake-Speare a lawyer?

Part 13

Valid Pointers to Shake-Speare being a Lawyer

16.  The oath of allegiance

In Macbeth 1.4.22-7 Macbeth says to Duncan:

                      "our duties
Are to your throne and state, children and servants;
Which do but what they should by doing everything
Safe toward your love and honour".

The great 18th century jurist William Blackstone commented on this passage: "safe (i.e. saved) toward your love and honour; and then the sense will be: 'Our duties are your children and servants or vassals to your throne or state; who do but what they should, by doing everything with a saving of their love and honour toward you'. The whole is an allusion to the form of doing homage in the feudal times. The oath of allegiance, or liege homage, to the king was absolute and without any exception; but simple homage, when done to a subject of lands holden of him, was always with a saving of the allegiance (the love and honour) due to the sovereign. 'Sauf le foy, que jeo doy a nostre seinor le roy' [save the faith I owe to our Sovereign Lord the King] as it in Littleton".

I think Blackstone shapes his interpretation too closely to the form of oath. A simpler interpretation is: "without hazard to your love and honour". But both interpretations mean much the same - the subject must put his duty to the sovereign first. The important point for our purposes is that Shake-Speare presumably had the French form of oath in mind. "Safe" [=sauf] otherwise seems odd in the context.

It seems unlikely that Will Shakspere would have known the French form, as it appeared in Littleton's Tenures, an old legal text book. Bacon knew at least the substance of the oath. For when the Earl of Essex offered him a parcel of land as compensation for failing to procure for him the office of Solicitor-general, Bacon replied: "My Lord, I see I must be your homager and hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law? always it is with a saving of his faith to the king and his other lords; and therefore, my Lord, I can be no more your than I was, and it must be with the ancient savings."

Parallel - Digestion and Appetite

First, Shake-Speare:

Macbeth (As the banquet is about to begin):

"Now, good digestion wait on appetite
And health on both!"
  Macbeth 3.4.37-8

Bacon:  "For the preservation of health the stomach should be in good appetite; because the appetite promotes digestion".
   History of Life and Death

Comment:  That good digestion depends on appetite seems a questionable notion - surely appetite is as likely to depend on good digestion. but once again we find Shake-Speare dragging in a Bacon theory on some matter of natural science.

Parallel - Sleep as Food-Nourishment

Shake-Speare:

"Sleep,  that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hur minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast;"
  Macbeth 2.2.37-40

Bacon: "The story goes that Epimenides slept many years in a cave without needing food; for in sleep the spirits are less predatory...As exercise demands more nourishment, so likewise sleep to a certain extent supplies it".
   History of Life and Death

"Sleep doth nourish much".
  Natural History

"Sleep nourisheth or at least preserveth bodies a long time without other nourishment".
  Natural History

Comment: Shake-Speare's "Chief nourisher in life's feast" is metaphorical - it is not dealing only with physical nourishment. The Arden editor notes on the line: "This may also have been suggested by an alternative meaning of ravell'd. Ravel, or ravelled, bread was whole meal bread and could be regarded as 'chief nourisher'". But it is less far-fetched to suppose it to have been suggested by Bacon's view of sleep (of which the editor makes no mention), especially as Bacon's dicta use the word "nourish".

Parallel - Air as the Seat of a house; Smells that 'woo'

First, Shake-Speare:

Duncan:  This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air
         Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
         Unto our gentle senses.
Banquo:               This guest of summer
         The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
         By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
         Smells wooingly here.

 Macbeth 1.6.1-6

Now, Bacon:  
"He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat committeth himself to prison. Neither do I reckon it an ill seat only where the air is unwholesome, but likewise where the air is unequal".
   Essay on Buildings

"I am much beholding to your highness's worthy servant Sir John Vaughan, the sweet air and loving usage of whose house hath already much revived my languishing spirits".
   Letter to Prince Henry

"But for the choice of places or seats, it is good to make trial not only of the aptness of air to corrupt but also of the moisture and dryness of the air".
   Natural History

"[Smells which are not too  strong] rather woo the sense than satiate it".
   Natural History

Comment:  Shake-Speare, and Bacon in two of his passages, describe the quality of the air as the "seat" of a house. Did anyone else? Both our authors speak of smells "wooing". Did anyone else?

Parallel - Honours and Instructions as Garments

First, Shake-Speare:

     "New honours come upon him
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
But with the aid of use".

Macbeth 1.3.145-7

And Bacon:  "Queen Elizabeth used to say of her instructions to great officers "that they were like graments, straight at first putting on, but did by and by wear loose enough".
  Apothegms

Comment:  Hounours in one case, instructions in the other, but a very similar conceit. First, honors or instructions are likened to garments. Second, that they then are modified or molded with usage.

Parallel - Sleeping and Dead as Lifeless Pictures

Shake-Speare:
               ...poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;"
  Hamlet 4.5.85-7

"He is a proper man's picture, but alas! who can converse with a dumb-show"?
  The Merchant of Venice  1.2.67-69

" .... the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures;"
  Macbeth 2.2.53-4

"[of unresponsive Adonis] "Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,"
   Venus and Adonis  211

Bacon:  "Words are but images of matter and except they have life and reason,  to fall in love with them is all one to fall in love with a picture".
   The Advancement of Learning

Comment:  Thus Bacon and Shake-Speare both describe someone or something devoid of animation or reason as a "picture".

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.