The word merely in the above quotation from the play is used in its strict Latin sense, merum, wholly. On the world's stage men and women, without exception, are all players. — Shake-speare. In the theatre of man's life, none are lookers-on. 134 ELIXIR "How much unlike art thou Mark Anthony ! Yet, coming from him, that great With his tinct gilded thee." Bacon. "[It is believed] that some grains of the medicine projected should in a few moments of time turn a sea of quicksilver or other material into gold." - Advancement of Learning (1603–5). Both authors called the tinct, which was supposed by the alchemists to have the property of transmuting base metals into gold, THE MEDICINE. Both evidently investigated this curious subject, Bacon even expressing the opinion that silver could be produced by artificial means more easily than gold. The true term for the tinct was Elixir. 135 HONORS LIKE GARMENTS "New honors come upon him, Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, 66 Queen Elizabeth used to say of her instructions to great officers, 'that they were like garments, straight at first putting on, but did Macbeth, i. 3 (1623). by and by wear loose enough.'” Apothegms (1624). But with the aid of use." It is perhaps significant that Bacon took Orpheus, the great musician whose lyre Jupiter placed among the stars, for his own model. He erected a statue of him in the orchard at Gorhambury as " PHILOSOPHY PERSONIFIED." Large pearls were called uniones and treated as dainties by the Romans. Bacon classified them among medicines for prolonging life. The printers of the Hamlet quartos, not knowing what a union was, substituted onyx for it. 139 GOVERNMENT BY MINORS "Woe to that land that 's govern'd by a child!" "Government of princes in minority. an infinite disadvan Richard III., ii. 3 (1597). tage to the state."— Advancement of Learning (1603-5). Queen. I will try the forces creatures as the great use of this observation, the inquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished Advancement of We count not worth the hanging, altogether." but none human, To try the vigor of them and apply them gather Their several virtues and effects. Cor. [aside]. I do not like her. She doth think she has Strange lingering poisons; I do know her spirit, And will not trust one of her A drug of such damn'd nature. Will stupefy and dull the sense Which first, perchance, she 'll prove on cats and dogs, Then afterward up higher." Cymbeline, i. 5 (1623). Learning (1603-5). "We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds which we use not only for view or rareness, but likewise for dissections. We also try poisons and other medicines upon them." New Atlantis (1624). The practice of vivisection, and trial of drugs on living organisms can be traced back to a very early period; but until Harvey resorted to it in order to demonstrate the circulation of the blood, knowledge of the subject was confined to a very limited circle of physiologists. It was on this account that Harvey has been called the Father of Vivisection. And yet it seems that Bacon and Shake-speare had both investigated it before Harvey's experiments became public, and were fully aware of the beneficent effects claimed in its behalf. And they use the same expression in their treatment of it: "First, perchance, she 'll prove it on cats and dogs, Shake-speare. "To speak, therefore, of medicine, and to resume that we have said, ascending a little higher." - Bacon. Harvey began his course of lectures after Shakespere's death in 1616; and twelve years after the latter's retirement from London. 143 BANISHMENT OF WOMEN FROM COURT From Shake-speare "King. Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; Our court shall be a little academe, Still and contemplative in living art. You three, Biron, Dumaine, and From Bacon "They would make you a king in a play.... What! nothing but tasks, nothing but working days? No feasting, no music, no dancing, no comedies, no love, no ladies?" -Gesta Grayorum (1594). CONDEMNED FOR VIRTUES "I cannot tell, good sir, for which of his virtues it was, but he was certainly whipp'd."- Winter's Tale, iv. 2 (1623). "For which of the good works do you stone me?" — Promus (159496). |