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."

Sonnet 107 (1609).

It is evident that these two passages deal with the same events; namely, the death of Queen Elizabeth, who was commonly called Cynthia, or "mortal moon," by the rhymesters of her time; the peaceful succession of James to the vacant throne in spite of the author's "fears" and the prophecies of all to the contrary; and the release of Southampton from the tower. The latter person is claimed by the poet as his "true love," and by Bacon as one whom he still "loved truly."

When the danger of a struggle for the crown was past, Bacon described the sensation as like that of waking from a fearful dream. The fears, expressed in the first line of the sonnet (quoted above), had been felt by him long before the sonnet was written; for he clearly foresaw that the rising spirit of independence in the House of Commons would eventually lead to an armed conflict over the royal prerogative.2

1 The use of the word "endured" in the line

"The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,"

does not militate against this construction. The word sometimes means simply to suffer without resistance, as in 'Macbeth,'

"Let me endure your wrath, if 't be not so." v. 5, 36.

Queen Elizabeth had no wish to prolong her life. She persistently refused on her death-bed to take any remedies, or even nourishment, for the purpose.

...

2 "It had been generally dispersed abroad that after Queen Elizabeth's decease there must follow in England nothing but confusions, interreigns and perturbations of estate; likely far to exceed the ancient calamities of the civil wars between the houses of Lancaster and York. . . . Neither wanted there here within this realm divers persons, both wise and well-affected, who, though they doubted not of the undoubted right, yet setting before themselves the waves of people's hearts, were not without fear what might be the event." - Bacon's History of Great Britain.

Bacon and Southampton had been in early life very intimate friends. They were fellow-lodgers at Gray's Inn, and fellow-supporters of the Earl of Essex. But in or about 1600 they became, outwardly at least, estranged, Southampton following Essex in his mad career, and Bacon siding with the government. There is reason to believe, however, says Mr. Spedding, that Bacon did all he could to save Southampton in that unhappy affair, mentioning his name in the Declaration concerning it "as slightly as it was possible to do without misrepresenting the case in one of its most material features;"1 and, also, using his private influence with the Queen after the trial to mitigate her displeasure. That there was danger in an open avowal of sympathy with Southampton at this time appears from a letter written by Cecil to Sir G. Carew in which he says: "those that would deal for him (of which number I protest to God I am one as far as I dare) are much disadvantaged."

Bacon's letter, of which we have quoted a part, was written on the eve of Southampton's release (1603), and is as follows:

66 It may please your Lordship:

"I would have been very glad to have presented my humble service to your Lordship by my attendance, if I could have foreseen that it should not have been unpleasing to you. And therefore, because I would commit no error, I choose to write; assuring your Lordship (how credible [incredible] soever it may seem to you at first) yet it is as true as a thing that God knoweth, that this great change [death of Elizabeth] hath wrought in me no other change towards your Lordship than this, that I may safely be now that which I was truly before. And so, craving no other pardon than for troubling you with this letter, I do not now begin, but continue to be,

"Your Lordship's humble and much devoted." Shake-speare had the same loving attachment to the Earl of Southampton in the first part of the decade 1590-1600. 1 Spedding's Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, iii. 75.

The Venus and Adonis' was dedicated to Southampton in 1593, and the Rape of Lucrece' in 1594, in terms of adoring friendship. Then there came a period of estrangement, the existence of which is proved not only by the sonnet already quoted, but also by the apology offered in nos. 116 and 120:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved."-116.

"That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you 've pass'd a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime.

O! that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits.

But that your trespass now becomes a fee;

Mine ransom yours, and yours must ransom me."— 120.

It is probable, as Mr. Spedding suggests, that Southampton did not know, until after his release, of Bacon's exertions to save him in 1601; therefore, Bacon may well have written of him and to him in 1603:

In verse:

"O! never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify;
As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie."

In prose:

"However incredible it may seem to you at first, I may safely be now that which I was truly before."

1. That both authors had at the same time (1593-94) a warm attachment for the Earl of Southampton.

2. Both became estranged from him a few years later; and 3. Both renewed their protestations of love, confessedly without knowing how those protestations would be received, in 1603.

The word "consent" in both of the above passages is used in a very peculiar sense. In its ordinary meaning, it is derived from the Latin consentire, to agree, but here it expresses the idea of harmony or concord, from concinere (concanere) to sing together. Bacon often uses metaphors, suggested by the science of music, in his writings. He compares, precisely as Shake-speare does, the ideal state of society, in which all its members, of differing capacities, tastes and acquirements, should work together for the common

good, to harmonious chords. In one of his speeches in the House of Commons he said:

"For consent, where tongue-strings, not heart-strings, make the music, that harmony may end in discord."

It has long been noted by commentators that the passage which we have quoted from 'Henry V.' bears a striking resemblance to one in Cicero's De Republica, a treatise now lost, but of which we have a fragment preserved in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei. It is in this fragment that we find the musical simile which may have inspired that in 'Henry V.,' and which is as follows:

"As among the different sounds that proceed from lyres, flutes, and the human voice there must be maintained a certain harmony, so where reason is allowed to control the various elements of a state there is obtained a perfect concord from the upper, lower, and middle classes of the people. What musicians call harmony in singing is concord in matters of state."-i. 74.

For the original of this famous passage, however, we must go still farther back in the world's literature. It is found in Plato.

Cicero, of course, followed Plato in the use of this remarkable metaphor, his whole treatise being only an adaptation of Plato's work on the same subject; but which of the two authors, Latin or Greek, Shake-speare himself followed, it is impossible, perhaps, to determine. Mr. Knight, in

deed, strongly favors the claim in behalf of Plato, for he finds the lines in Shake-speare, as he says, "more deeply imbued with the Platonic philosophy than the passage in Cicero."

It is especially significant to find the conception of a social state, in which citizens are likened to "consenting" chords, or heart-strings, in both our authors.

Neither Plato nor St. Augustine had been translated into English at the time the play was written.