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Shake-speare:

FLATTERY

"Menenius. His nature is too noble for the world;

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for 's power to thunder.

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"Flattery is the style of slaves, the refuse of vices. The lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people." — De Augmentis.

PRIDE AND MISFORTUNE

Shake-speare:

"Coriolanus. Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death, Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger

Bacon:

With but a grain a day, I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fair word.
Coriolanus.

"The proud man, while he despises others, neglects himself." - De Augmentis.

Mr. Wigston adds the following excellent criticism:

"The play of Coriolanus' should be studied in relationship to the character of Julius Cæsar, as depicted in the play of that name. In these plays we are presented with two noble Romans, who are successful soldiers, and who attain to the highest martial honors. But whilst Julius Cæsar is represented as a brave man, he is also presented as a profound dissembler; in short, a master of those arts which seek and attain popularity by means of concealing the inner man. Cæsar is painted as feeling just the same sort of contempt for the Roman common people as Coriolanus feels; but with the great difference, that while the former conceals his contempt, the latter reveals it, and revels in unbosoming himself of his scorn. Both of these characters are victims of envy; both meet with a violent and tragic end."

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And much different from the man position to melancholy and dis

he was.

taste, specially the same happening

Abbess. Unquiet meals make ill against the long vacation when digestions;

What doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy, Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,

And at their heels a huge infectious

troop

Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?"

Comedy of Errors, v. 1 (1623).

company failed and business both; for upon my Solicitor's place I grew indisposed and inclined to superstition. Now upon Mill's place I find a relapse unto my old symptom, as I was wont to have it many years ago, as after sleeps, strife at meats, strangeness, clouds, etc."- Private Memoranda (1608).

The symptoms of disease given by the Abbess in the play are those of dyspepsia, -a malady with which Bacon was afflicted all his life, or until he became the victim of gout. Unquiet meals," or "strife at meats," are mentioned as one of the causes of it, in both cases.

376

SINON, THE PROTOTYPE OF DECEIT

"It cannot be,' quoth she, 'that

so much guile'

She would have said-'can lurk

in such a look.'

But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,

And from her tongue 'can lurk'

from 'cannot' took.

'It cannot be,' she in that sense forsook,

And turn'd it thus, 'it cannot be,

I find,

But such a face should bear a

wicked mind;

"There is no man but will be a little more raised by hearing it said, 'Your enemies will be glad of this'-Hoc Ithacus velit, et magno mercentur Atridæ - than by hearing it said only, 'This is evil for you.'"- Advancement of Learning (1603–5).

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Lucrece illustrates the deceitfulness of Tarquin by citing the case of Sinon, who under false pretences secured the admission of the wooden horse into Troy. Bacon illustrates his definition of a sophism by quoting from Virgil a line of Sinon's speech made to the Trojans on that occasion; that is to say, Shake-speare and Bacon both chose the same classical character as the prototype of deceit.

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Shake-speare compares a war in which the contending forces are of equal strength and varying fortune with the struggle between the powers of light and darkness at break of day. At such a moment day and night are at an equipoise. Bacon, having the same phenomena in mind, says that tempests are greatest at the time of the equinox, for then day and night are equal in length and also (inferentially) in power. Both authors apply this theory to civil

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Bacon made a distinction in the use of imagery between a foreign war and a civil war. The former he likened to the heat of exercise; the latter, to the heat of a fever. In the above passage from 'Henry IV.,' Shake-speare is treating of the civil war under Richard II., and in strict accordance with Bacon's usage, he calls it a fever.

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The heavens themselves, the of Learning (1603-5).

planets, and this centre

Observe degree. . . . O! when

degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high

designs,

The enterprise is sick. How could

communities,

Degrees in schools, and brother

hoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable

shores,

The primogenitive and due of

birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that
string,

And, hark! what discord follows!"
Troilus and Cressida, i. 3 (1609).

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In the second edition of the Advancement,' Bacon, who was a nobleman and who had a contempt for the political abilities of the commonalty, inserted the word "ranks" in the sentence quoted above, so as to make his meaning still clearer. It reads there:

"Nothing derogates from the dignity of a state more than confusion of ranks and degrees."

Mr. E. S. Alderson, an excellent critic, to whom we are indebted for this and the next following parallelisms, says:

"The political wisdom and insight displayed in Troilus and Cressida have been a standing puzzle to all writers on Shakespeare. How came he so well versed in state mysteries and policies? . . . Bacon had been brought up among statesmen. At the age of seventeen he formed one of the suite of Sir Amyas Paulet, the Ambassador to the French Court, and before he was nineteen had begun the study of European politics, so that, by the time the plays were written, the ways and policies of kings and states were quite familiar to him. How they became so to Shakspere we can find no clue."

380

YOUTH AND OLD AGE

"Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;

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