Servant. The English force, so please you. Macbeth. Take thy face hence." Ibid., v. 3. The play of Macbeth' is crowded with proofs, as shown by Mr. Ruggles in his 'Method of Shakespeare as an Artist' (1870), that the dramatist had made (as we have already said) a painstaking study of physiognomy. It was on the sudden entrance of the murderers into the presence of Lady Macduff that she asks in terror, "What are these faces ?" So Macbeth himself, when the approach of the English forces is announced to him, dwells on the signs of fear in the face of the messenger. The results of Bacon's study of this subject were given to the world in the first edition of 'The Advancement of Learning,' in 1605, simultaneously with the production of 'Macbeth.' Our quotation above is taken from its second edition (in which the subject is still more elaborately discussed), contemporaneous with the first publication of the play. So mortal, that but dip a knife in prefer a witch or mountebank to a it, learned physician.”— Advancement Where it drops blood, no cataplasm of Learning (1603-5). so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death, That is but scratch'd withal." Hamlet, iv. 7 (1604). "Corrupted By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks." Othello, i. 3 (1622). 505 JEALOUSY "Pardon me, wife. Henceforth, do what thou wilt, "The Italian says: Sospetto licentia fede; as if suspicion did I rather will suspect the sun with give a passport to faith." - Essay cold Than thee with wantonness; now doth thy honor stand, In him that was of late an heretic, As firm as faith." The Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4 (1623). of Suspicion (1625). In the quarto editions of The Merry Wives of Windsor' of 1602 and 1619 (the latter published three years after the death of William Shakspere of Stratford) the renunciation of suspicion for the future, declared by Bacon to be under such circumstances in accordance with human nature, is made in these words: "Ford. Well, wife, here take my hand; upon my soul, I love thee dearer than I do my life, and joy I have so true and constant wife. My jealousy shall never more offend thee." And chastise with the valor of my tongue "If a witch by imagination hurt any one afar off, it cannot be done naturally, but by working upon the spirit of one that comes to the witch, and from thence upon the All that impedes thee from the imagination of another.". Sylva The witches took full possession of Lady Macbeth's mind, but only in the manner described by Bacon, through the intermediate agency of her husband, who had interviewed them. WIVES MURDERING THEIR HUSBANDS "For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been depos'd, some slain in war, "Kings have to deal with their neighbors, their wives, their children, their prelates or clergy, their nobles, their second-nobles or gentlemen, their merchants, their commons, and their men of war; Some haunted by the ghosts they and from all these arise dan have depos'd, Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd, gers. . . . "For their wives: there are cruel examples of them. Livia is in famed for the poisoning of her husband; Roxalana, Solyman's All murder'd; for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of wife, was the destruction of that a king Keeps Death his court." renowned prince Sultan Mustapha, and otherwise troubled his house Richard II., iii. 2 (1597). and succession; Edward the Second 512 of England his queen had the principal hand in the deposing and murder of her husband. This kind of danger is then to be feared." Essay of Empire (1625). CHILDREN, THE HIGHEST FELICITY From Shake-speare "Thrice blessed they that master so their blood To undergo such maiden pilgrimage. But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, From Bacon "Childless she [Elizabeth] was, indeed, and left no issue ; . some taking it for a diminution of felicity, for that to be happy both in the individual self and in the propagation of the kind would be a blessing above the condition of humanity." - The Fortunate Grows, lives and dies in single Memory of Elizabeth (1608). blessedness." Midsummer-Night's Dream, i. 1 (1600). 513 DISCERNING CHARACTER IN EYES AND FACES "A number of subtile persons, whose eyes do dwell upon the faces and fashions of men, do well know the advantage of this observation, as being most part of their Much Ado, v. 2 (1600). ability; neither can it be denied but that it is a great discovery of dissimulations." Advancement of - Learning, Bk. ii. (1605). |