Bacon had previously stated the principle underlying the soothsayer's speech as follows: "Others, that draw nearer to probability, calling to their view the secrets of things and especially the contagion that passeth from body to body, do conceive that there should be some transmissions and operations from spirit to spirit without the mediation of the senses; whence the conceit has grown of the mastering spirit."- Advancement of Learning (1603–5). On the details of this extraordinary parallelism we quote. from Judge Nathaniel Holmes: "A similar story is to be found in North's translation of Plutarch's life of Anthony, which Shakespeare may have seen as well as Bacon; and it is true that some parts of it are very closely followed in the play. There is little doubt that the writer had read Plutarch. But Plutarch makes the soothsayer a member of the household of Anthony at Rome: 'with Antonius there was a Soothsayer or Astronomer of Egypt that could cast a figure and judge of men's nativities, to tell them what should happen to them.' But the play, like Bacon's story, makes him not only an Egyptian, but one of the household of Cleopatra; and in the play, he is sent by Cleopatra as one of her numerous messengers from Egypt to Rome to induce Anthony to return to Egypt; and in this he is successful; all which is in exact keeping with Bacon's statement that he was thought to be suborned by Cleopatra to make Anthony live in Egypt; but of this there is not the least hint in Plutarch. All this goes strongly to show that this story, together with the doctrine of a predominant or mastering spirit of one man over another, went into the play through the Baconian strainer; for it is next to incredible that both Bacon and Shakespeare should make the same variations upon the common original." - Authorship of Shakespeare, i. 292. 17 LOCATION OF THE SOUL From Shake-speare (Which some suppose the soul's King John, v. 7 (1623). From Bacon "The opinion of Plato, who placed the understanding in the brain... deserveth not to be despised, but much less to be allowed."- Advancement of Learning (1603-5). Every man, says Bacon, has two souls: one, in common with the brute creation; the other, especially inspired by God. The former, which he calls the sensible soul, he locates (to use his own language) "chiefly in the head;" the latter, or rational one, in no particular part of the body. The doubt he evidently felt on this point is reflected in 'King John.' To make a perfect woman, she proportions; the other, by taking This singular conception appears once more in Bacon's prose works. In his history of 'Henry VII.' he says: "The instructions touching the Queen of Naples were so curious and exquisite, being as articles whereby to direct a survey or framing a particular of her person, for complexion, favour, feature, stature, health, age, customs, behavior, conditions and estate, as if ... he meant to find all things in one woman" (1621). It may be well to add that Bacon makes a characteristic error in his essay, quoted above; for it was not Apelles, but Zeuxis, of whom it is told that he took five beautiful maidens of Greece to serve as models for his picture of Helen. The author of the Plays was evidently familiar with this classical story. The Winter's Tale' was written in or about 1611; the 'Tempest,' in 1613; both were first printed in 1623. The essay preceded both. For the second edition of the Advancement,' printed in the same year as the play, Bacon rewrote the above-quoted sentence, as follows: "The comparison of the mind of a wise man to a glass is the more proper, because in a glass he can see his own image, which the eye itself without a glass cannot do." The original of both of these parallel passages, however, is in Plato, not then translated into English: "You may take the analogy of the eye; the eye sees not itself, but from some other thing, as, for instance, from a glass; it can also see itself by reflection in another eye.". ·First Alcibiades. Taken from the Adagia of Erasmus, the Latin work from which Bacon introduced more than two hundred proverbs into his commonplace-book. The Adagia had not been translated into English when the play of 'King Henry VI.' was published or written. Erasmus says: "Sunt qui scribunt crocodilum, conspecto procul homine, lachrymas emittere atque eundem mox devorare." That feeds and breeds by a com posture stolen From general excrement." Timon of Athens, v. 3 (1623). "Your chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach." From Bacon "Putrefaction is the bastard brother of vivification.". · Natural History (1622-25). "Moulds of pies and flesh, of oranges and lemons, turn into worms."- Ibid. "The nature of vivification is 1 Henry IV., ii. 2 (1598). best inquired into in creatures bred of putrefaction. Dregs of wine turn into gnats.” — Ibid. "Wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms." stition (1607-12). -Essay of Super Bacon strongly held the old notion that putrefying substances generate organisms, such as frogs, grasshoppers, and flies. And so did Shake-speare. Indeed, both authors seem to have made a like investigation into the cause of the alleged phenomenon, as the following parallelism will show: 22 ORIGIN OF LIFE FROM PUTREFACTION "Hamlet. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog, being Polonius. I have, my lord. sun. Conception is a blessing, Hamlet, ii. 2 (1604). "Aristotle dogmatically assigned the cause of generation to the sun." -Novum Organum (1608-20). |