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."

It thus appears

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.

116

OBEDIENCE TO RULERS

From Shake-speare

"Canterbury.

heaven divide

Therefore doth

The state of man in diverse func

tions,

Setting endeavor in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

From Bacon

"The third platform [model] is the government of God himself over the world, whereof lawful monarchies are a shadow. . . . So, we see, there be platforms of monarchies, both in nature, and above nature; even from the monarch of heaven and earth to the king, if

Obedience; for so work the honey- you will, in a hive of bees.".

This is a variation of the theme treated of in the parallelism last cited. Instead of comparing the differences of character and equipment among citizens of an ideal state of society with chords in music, both authors are now emphasizing obedience to a ruler as a means of securing social harmony. Bacon says that monarchies are established in the very nature of things, not only in human affairs, but also both above and below the human, from God in heaven to the king in a hive of bees. This is likewise the exact statement in Shake-speare, including the same illustration from bees and the common error that bees have kings. Dr. E. A. Abbott makes the following comment on this parallelism:

"No other passage that I know of expresses that multiplicity in unity, that identity of object amid diversity of agents and means, which was to characterize Bacon's ideal English nation, so aptly as the well-known extract from the council scene in 'Henry V.'" - Introduction to Bacon's Essays.

In 'Troilus and Cressida,' printed for the first time in the year following that in which the Postnati speech was delivered, and therefore suggestive of a common study of the subject in prose and verse, the providence that governs a state, or (as expressed in 'Henry V.') the instinct of obedience to a ruler, is pronounced a mystery. Bacon also pronounces it a mystery:

The identity of thought on this subject between the two authors runs even into minor details:

I. Shake-speare says, referring to the mystery of government, that "relation durst never meddle" with it. Bacon also says (Advancement of Learning,' Book II.) that " governments are deemed secret, in both the respects in which things are deemed secret; for some things are secret because they are hard to know, and some because they are not fit to utter."

II. Shake-speare says that the soul of state, in the different functions into which government is divided, is in "continual motion;" Bacon defines the soul itself as continual motion.

The speech on the Postnati was delivered, as we have said, in 1608, but not printed until 1641, or twenty-five years after the death of William Shakspere of Stratford.