Parallels - Weep to have - Sonnet 64

First, Shake-Speare:

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminante –

That time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Sonnet 64, 11-14

Also:

Portia:                   then confess

What treason there is mingled with your love.

Bassanio:  None but that ugly treason of mistrust,

Which make me fear th’enjoying of my love,

The Merchant of Venice, 3.2.26-31

Now, Bacon:

[A classical dictum]  Non uti ut non appetas, non appetere ui non metuas,

Sunt animi pusilli et diffidentis [To abstain from the use of a thing that you may not feel a want of it; to shun the want that you may not feel the loss of it, are the precautions of pusillanimity and cowardice].

The Advancement of Learning (Spedding 3.427)

I will not use because I will not desire. I will not desire because I will not fear to want.

A Conference of Pleasure p. 5

Comment: Fearing to lose love was of course a commonplace. But to weep to have it in case you lose it suggests that Shake-Speare had in mind the philosophical conundrum of the Bacon texts. (The conundrum is said to have its source in Plutarch’s Life of Solon).

Shakespeare a Lawyer? - 23 - Sonnets - Conclusion

Was Shake-Speare a lawyer?

Part 23

Valid Pointers to Shake-Speare being a Lawyer

Legalisms in Shake-Speare's Sonnets

Elizabethan sonnet sequences did not customarily abound in legal metaphors. Yet there appear to be law terms in 19 of the 154 sonnets of Shake-Speare. These are in Nos. 4, 13, 14, 18, 30, 35, 46, 49, 58, 74, 87, 88, 92, 120, 124, 126, 133, 134, and 146. Of the many sonnet sequences written in the 1590's, only two approach or surpass Shake-Speare's in density of legal allusions. One of these other two authors was anonymous and so may have been a lawyer. The other is not known to have been a lawyer but he had the sort of background which would normally had led to schooling in one of the inns of court. This person, like
Bacon, was part of the Earl of Essex's circle, and so is likely to have been known by Bacon.

I won't repost any of the above sonnets here as readers likely have copies of them. But I'll add some of Cockburn's comments on 4 of them. Cockburn says that Shake-Speare handles his legal allusions with great assurance in the sonnets, and in two of them displays knowledge that he wouldn't expect Will Shakspere of Stratford to possess, or at any rate to use.

Sonnet 46 is an elaborate analogy based on a partition action, available to joint owners who could not agree on how to divide their property. The issue would be decided by a jury (a "quest"; or an inquest). Even if Will Shakspere knew of partition actions, would he have thought of basing a sonnet on one? Such a legal action is not mentioned by any of the other 16 playwrights in the Clarkson and Warren study.

Sonnet 87 bases his friend's love successively on a charter, bonds, a gift and a patent. The patent reverts to a friend, its grantor, because the poet is unworthy of his love. This is a reference to the legal doctrine of "consideration", a contractual promise being unenforceable unless it is supported by a quid pro quo. Lines 10-11 refer to the avoidance of a contract made under a 'mistake' (misprision). It's extremely hard to believe that a non-lawyer would have both topics in mind for writing a sonnet.

In Sonnet 30 the legal references seem less conscious and so as having "slipped" from the author casually. The words "sessions", "summon up", "dateless", and "cancelled" all have a legal connotation. Bonds and leases expire at their "date". And the woe is like a bond or debt which may be "cancelled".

Sonnet 146 is intended as a devout poem on the Soul, and so is not the sort of piece into which a poet would introduce legal metaphors just to be clever. It was certainly not the fashion to use them in the many other Elizabethan poems about the Soul. But here they percolate in - "lease", "inheritors", "terms".

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In conclusion on this topic, this list of legalisms in the plays and sonnets collectively, and sometimes individually (as in the King John case and the three Hamlet cases) are sufficient to establish that Shake-Speare was probably a lawyer. This becomes a strong probability when considering also the early acquisition of his legal knowledge. And much of it is of a kind which would not have been learnt by a clerk in an attorney's office, even disregarding Shakspere's youth. Overall then, Shake-Speare's law is that of a barrister.

This, along with other internal evidence, such as the author having been a student of Cambridge and a member of Gray's Inn, makes it extremely unlikely that Will Shakspere of Stratford could have been the author. 

Bacon's Poetic Reputation

Bacon's poetic reputation comes from a few sources:

1. He wrote how poets behave when they come for an opinion of their poetry. The assumption here is that he's implying that poets come to him for his advice on their poetry, further implying that his reputation with poetry is well-regarded. 

2. He called himself a poet. Further than that, he called him self a "concealed poet". He called himself this to another poet--John Davies, a distinguished poet who was on his way to meet James I to assume the English throne. The implication here is that Bacon wouldn't have identified himself as a poet to a known distinguished poet unless his own reputation, even as an anonymous poet, was well-regarded. It also shows that his anonymity wasn't complete, that others, such as Davies must have known of his concealed poet status. Also, this letter from Bacon to Davies was in the hand of one of Bacon's secretaries, though it was signed by Bacon in his own hand. This shows further that Bacon's anonymous writings were known by some others who honored his desire for anonymity. 

3. Bacon did write some poems, some to his name, and some other that are argued to be his though not in his name. He wrote some Psalm paraphrases under his name in late 1624. These are not on the same quality as the Shake-speare sonnets or early poems. However, at this time an explanation for their poorer quality (assuming Bacon did write the Shake-speare poetry) is that by late 1624 "Bacon was an old and broken man, undergoing a prolonged sickness, perhaps with declining powers, and within 18 months of death." And he probably hadn't written any poetry since 1613 when he was appointed Attorney-general, so that his inspirational powers were weaker. Further, even trying to paraphrase the psalms into verse was probably a poor judgment on his part as they don't lend themselves well to this change without subtracting from their effect. 

4. In 1599 he says he wrote a sonnet to the Queen who was to dine with him. This was after the Earl of Essex made his disastrous return from Ireland. And it's been surmised that possibly this sonnet was an effort to lessen the damage to Essex from the Queen's anger. And that possibly this sonnet or it's theme  found it's way into the play The Merchant of Venice where Portia gives her speech to Shylock "The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, etc." It does seem odd that Shake-Speare in this speech of Portia speaks of the Mercy of the monarch as above the power he/she wields. What does this aspect of a monarch have to do with a moneylender? Wouldn't a somewhat despised moneylender relate better to, say, a Duke than to a monarch?  In any case, we don't have the sonnet that Bacon wrote for the Queen. But the assumption is that based on Bacon's language skills and poetic reputation that his sonnet would likely be of good quality if he felt confident enough to read it to the Queen.

More importantly is whether Bacon's style in these psalm paraphrases is like Shake-speare's style. Cockburn says they are similar in diction and the use of alliteration. And there are a number of verbal parallels in his paraphrases with phrases in Shake-speare. For example, both Bacon and Shake-speare use the term "line of life" (Bacon regarded life as a line that moves forward). "Mounted high" is used by both; the both use "frail mortality"; they both use "thou to them" or some other version having 2 personal pronouns joined by a preposition. These are just a few of many similarities.

Eclipse Endured - Shakespeare Sonnet 107

The following touches very briefly on an analysis of Sonnet 107 by N.B.Cockburn in his The Bacon Shakespeare Question (1998). He analyzes eight of the sonnets in relation to the authorship question.

Sonnet 107

Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

The 'mortal moon' of the sonnet is the Queen; she was often compared with Diana (alias Cynthia), the moon goddess, as an alternative name for her. "Hath her eclipse endured" means "to have suffered death".  The terms are similar to those of Edgar in King Lear when he says "Men must endure their going hence (dying)". The sonnet focuses on the fact that before the queen's death there had been widespread fears that  the succession would be tempestous. But it proved peaceful. Bacon used the same phrase for the same purpose when he wrote in his History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh (1622), referring to another Queen Elizabeth, King James' mother-in-law, that "This lady . . . had endured a strange eclipse by the King's flight and temporary depriving from the crown".

No one has found the phrase 'endure an eclipse" anywhere else in the whole range of Elizabethan literature, which suggests that it was unique to Bacon and Shake-speare.

Cold and Unmoved - Shakespeare Sonnet 94

Parallels in Sonnet 94

This analysis is abridged to about half its full length.

                   Sonnet 94    

     They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
     That do not do the thing, they most do show,
     Who moving others, are themselves as stone,
     Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
     They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
     And husband nature's riches from expense,
     They are the lords and owners of their faces,
     Others, but stewards of their excellence:
     The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
     Though to it self, it only live and die,
     But if that flower with base infection meet,
     The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
         For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,
         Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

Cockburn's comments: This enigmatic sonnet seems to have baffled commentators, perhaps more than any other. This sonnet makes two statements about human goodness: (1) A good person will exercise icy self-control and refrain from hurting others; (2) If a good person turns rotten, he will be worse (or at least seem worse) than someone who was bad all along.

(note: here Cockburn discusses whether the sonnet concerned the "fair youth". He shows inconsistencies with that argument and concludes that "It is far more likely that No. 94 is not about the Youth at all. The poem is neither addressed to him, nor speaks of him in the third person". Cockburn suggests that this sonnet MAY be the sonnet that Bacon wrote for the Queen. Bacon had written:

"About the middle of the Michaelmas term her Majesty had a purpose to dine at my lodge at Twickenham Park, at which time I had (though I profess myself not to be a poet) prepared a sonnet directly tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord (The Earl of Essex prior to his aborted coup)". 

If my surmise is correct, Bacon in the sonnet is urging the Queen to refrain from using her power to hurt Essex, despite her apparent intention to hurt him. "Influencing others, but herself uninfluenced, rock-like, of independent judgment, her own mistress" is presumably how the Queen liked to see herself. It was certainly how Bacon saw her.

One of the things which has been thought most puzzling about Sonnet 94 is the words "unmoved, cold" in line 4. Many commentators have refused to believe that Shake-Speare intended to extol being "unmoved, cold" as a virtue. Not so the Penguin editor of the Sonnets (1986), who paraphrases L1. 3-4 as "Such people, moving others emotionally while remaining detached, are as cold as the proverbial stone - a frequent image in Shakespeare of unrelenting indifference". But the editor, like almost everyone else, has misunderstood what Shake-Speare meant by "unmoved, cold". How could Shake-Speare have extolled "unrelenting indifference" as a virtue which would help one to inherit Heaven's graces? In truth, he was using the words "unmoved, cold" as Bacon used them, to mean "free from passion". Regarding the use of "cold", Bacon had written of Lord Burleigh "...out of the greatness of his experience and wisdom and out of the coldness of his nature hath qualified generally all hard and extreme courses". On the hypothesis that Sonnet 94 was Bacon's sonnet to the Queen, that is exactly what Shake-Speare was urging the Queen to do -- to show "coldness of nature" and qualify all hard and extreme courses against Essex.

For Bacon's use of the word "unmoved" one goes first to a letter of advice, drafted by Bacon, which Essex sent in his own name to the young Earl of Rutland who was about to travel. The letter says "Health consisteth in an unmovable constancy and a freedom from passions which are indeed the sickness of the mind". Bacon's use of the word 'Constancy' as the foundation of virtue had this same meaning of 'free from passions'. One finds echoes of this in other Shake-Speare texts. In Henry V, 2.2.132-4 "Free from gross passions or of mirth or anger / Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood". In Hamlet 3.2.71-2 "Give me that man that is not passion's slave". In Measure For Measure 3.2.219-20 "It is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking". Though 'constant' isn't in Sonnet 94, the other two words "unmoved" and "cold" do.

And when one finds them both used in an unusual sense which has nonplussed commentators, but is the sense in which Bacon used them, that must surely tell in favor of his authorship of this sonnet.

In addition, there are a half dozen other little language echoes in this sonnet to a letter Bacon wrote to the Queen at about the same time that Bacon had said he wrote the sonnet to the Queen reconciling her with Essex. But it would take about another page to post them here so I'll leave them out, except for the following:

After Essex's abortive rebellion on 8 February 1601, Bacon tells us that he "did both commend her Majesty's mercy terming it to her an excellent balm that did continually distil from her sovereign hands". This echoes the lines from The Merchant of Venice 4.1.180-1 "the quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven".

Cockburn concludes with "Whether or not Sonnet 94 is Bacon's sonnet to the Queen, the unusual use of "cold" and "unmoved" and the other parallels I have mentioned afford strong evidence that Bacon was the sonnet's author.

Parallel - Weep to have through fear of losing - Sonnet 64

First, Shake-Speare:

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminante –

That time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Sonnet 64, 11-14

Also:

Portia:                   then confess

What treason there is mingled with your love.

Bassanio:  None but that ugly treason of mistrust,

Which make me fear th’enjoying of my love,

The Merchant of Venice, 3.2.26-31

Now, Bacon:

[A classical dictum]  Non uti ut non appetas, non appetere ui non metuas,

Sunt animi pusilli et diffidentis [To abstain from the use of a thing that you may not feel a want of it; to shun the want that you may not feel the loss of it, are the precautions of pusillanimity and cowardice].

The Advancement of Learning (Spedding 3.427)

I will not use because I will not desire. I will not desire because I will not fear to want.

A Conference of Pleasure p. 5

Comment: Fearing to lose love was of course a commonplace. But to weep to have it in case you lose it suggests that Shake-Speare had in mind the philosophical conundrum of the Bacon texts. (The conundrum is said to have its source in Plutarch’s Life of Solon).

The Bacon and Shakespeare Theory of Spirits - 7

The Bacon and Shake-Speare Theory of "spirits"

part 7 of 9 

(h)  indulgence in sex causes expense of spirit

First, Shake-Speare:

Sonnet 129:

     Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
     Is lust in action, and till action, lust
     Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame,
     Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
     Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
     Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
     Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
     On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
     Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
     Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
     A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
     Before a joy proposed behind a dream.
       All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
       To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

On lines 1-2, compare Bacon's Natural History:

"It hath been observed by the ancients that much use of Venus [sex] doth dim the sight. The cause...is...the expense of spirits".

J.M. Robertson in his The Baconian Heresy (p. 457) gives two other instances of "spend spirits", namely:

"A scholar doth disdain to spend his spirits
Upon such base employment as a hard labour"
   Patient Grisil (1599) by Thomas Dekker

"Foolish enamorates who spend their ages, their spirits, nay themselves in the servile and ridiculous employments of their mistresses".
   Apology for Actors by Thomas Heywood

The first of these passages is not about lust, and the second is not solely about lust and does not use the exact expression "expense of spirit [or spirits]".

Now on lines 4-7 of the sonnet, compare Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients where in the chapter on Dionysus or Desire he says of desire of all kinds (in Spedding's translation of the Latin):

"[Desire] never rests satisfied with what it has, but goes on and on, with infinite insatiable appetite, panting after new triumphs. Tigers also are kept in its stalls and yoked to its chariot, for as soon as it ceases to go on foot and comes to ride in its chariot, as in celebration of its victory and triumph over reason, then it is cruel, savage and pitiless.

Surely one hears some echo here of Shake-Speare's cruel, savage, past reason.  How likely is it that two authors writing a few lines independently on this subject would both collocate the words italicised?

end of (h)

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(i)    blood and spirit are quite separate things

From Shake-Speare's Julius Caesar 2.1.166-70

"Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood.             [Line 168]
O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,
And not dismember Caesar!"

The odd-seeming line 168 is another application of the technical doctrine of spirits. On the theory of Bacon and others the blood and the spirit were quite separate things. We have seen under (b) above that the vital spirits but not the blood were considered to flow through the body's arteries. Bacon's conception of the vital spirits was that they were like "a breath compounded of flame and air", quoted earlier in (e). In a letter to King James of 1621 Bacon distinguished between spirit and blood, referring to Henry VII "whose spirit, as well as his blood, is doubled upon your Majesty".

end of (i) and of part 7

More Promus - 9 - Remover to remove - Sonnet 116

9. From Bacon's Promus (entry 1422)

(as it was found - not counting the quote marks)

"Removing  (Remuant"

Then we find in Shake-Speare's Sonnet 116:

            "....love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove".

Comment:  In Bacon's Promus entry "Removing" means "changing"; and "Remuant" was a French word meaning "restless", and Bacon evidently Englished it as "removing" which thus means the same. This explains the Sonnet's line "Or bends with the remover to remove", which thus means "Or changes when it finds some change in the loved one". The O.E.D. defines this meaning of "remover" as "One who changes his place, a restless or stirring person; rare". It cites only two instances. One is the Sonnet line. The other is Bacon's Essay on Fortune which says: "An hasty fortune maketh an Enterpriser and Remover (the French hath it better: Entreprenant or Remuant): but the exercised fortune maketh the able man". In short, it looks as though Bacon in his notebook may have coined the word "remover" in the sense in question, and then Shake-Speare used it in his Sonnet which was probably written about the same period, the mid 1590's. Even if "remover" in this sense was not unique to our two authors, it was certainly rare.

Parallel - Nature's Audit

Shake-Speare:

"She [Nature] may detain, but not still keep her treasure.
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,"

 Sonnet 126, 10-11

and, Bacon: "Men should frequently call upon Nature to render her account.
   Cogitationes de Natura Rerum

Parallel - Slander as a Crow

First, Shake-Speare:

 "[Slander] is a crow that flies".

Sonnet 70, line 4

And, Bacon: "Fame hath swift wings, especially that which hath black feathers [i.e. slander or ill repute]".

Parallel - Weeping through Fear of Loss

First, Shake-Speare:

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminante –

That time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Sonnet 64, 11-14

Also:

Portia:                   then confess

                   What treason there is mingled with your love.

Bassanio:  None but that ugly treason of mistrust,

                   Which make me fear th’enjoying of my love,

Merchant of Venice 3.2.27-9

Now, Bacon:

[A classical dictum]  Non uti ut non appetas, non appetere ut non metuas,

sunt animi pusilli et diffidentis [To abstain from the use of a thing that you may not feel a want of it; to shun the want that you may not feel the loss of it, are the precautions of pusillanimity and cowardice].

The Advancement of Learning (Spedding 3.427)

and also: 

I will not use because I will not desire. I will not desire because I will not fear to want.

A Conference of Pleasure p. 5

Comment: Fearing to lose love was of course a commonplace. But to weep to have it in case you lose it suggests that Shake-Speare had in mind the philosophical conundrum of the Bacon texts. (The conundrum is said to have its source in Plutarch’s Life of Solon).

Parallel - Vanity with Gracious

First, Shake-Speare:

"Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,"

 Sonnet 62, 1-5

now Bacon:

"Neither had the fame of Cicero, Seneca, Plinius Secundus, borne her age so well, it it had not been joined with some vanity in themselves; like varnish that maketh ceilings not only shine but last. In some persons [this] is not only comely but gracious.

Comment:  Personal vanity collocated with "gracious".

Parallel - Chamber of Imagination

Shakespeare:
"Th' idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination,"
   Much Ado About Nothing 4.1.224

Shakespeare:
"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
We summon up remembrance of things past,"
  Sonnet 30, 1-2

Bacon: "[Certain facts] fit to be tabled and pictured in the chambers of meditation."
   Letter to Tobie Mathew