صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

MACBETH, Act i. Sc. vi. :

This castle hath a pleasant seat—the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

3. ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING :

Behaviour seemeth to me a garment of the mind, and to have the conditions of a garment. For it ought to be made in fashion, it ought not to be too curious.

HAMLET, Act i. Sc. iii. :

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not exprest in fancy.

4. ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING :

In the third place I set down reputation, because of the peremptory tides and currents it hath, which, if they be not taken in due time, are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after game of reputation.

JULIUS CESAR, Act iv. Sc. iii. :

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune:
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

5. ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING :

Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, where he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philosophy, because they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered by time and experience.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, Act ii. Sc. iii. :

Not much

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy.

Aristotle quoted incorrectly in both these passages. He says political, not moral, philosophy.

6. APOPHTHEGMS:

Bacon relates that a fellow named Hog importuned Sir Nicholas to save his life on account of the kindred between Hog and Bacon. "Aye, but," replied the judge, "You and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged; for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged.'

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR :

Evans.-Hing-hang-hog.

S. Quickly.-Hang hog-is the Latin for Bacon.

7. ON CUNNING :

For there be many men that have secret hearts, but transparent

countenances.

HENRY IV.:

The cheek

Is apter than the tongue to tell an errand.

8. COLLECTION OF SENTENCES:

He that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memories.

HENRY VI. :

An insult, when we think it is forgotten,

Is written in the book of memory,

E'en in the heart, to scourge our apprehensions.

9. INTERPRETATION OF NATURE:

Yet evermore it must be remembered, that the least part of knowledge passed to man by this so large a charter from God-must be subject to that use for which God hath granted it, which is the benefit and relief of the state and society of man.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE, Act i. Sc. ii. :

Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence;
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both use and thanks.

10. ON ADVERSITY :

It is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn errand, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome errand.

HENRY IV.:

Bright metals on a sullen errand

Will show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

Note the peculiar use of the words knee and chew. 11. LIFE OF HENRY VII. :

As his victory gave him the knee, so his purposed marriage with the Lady Elizabeth gave him the heart, so that both knee and heart did truly bow before him.

RICHARD II. :

Show Heaven the humbled heart and not the knee.

HAMLET :

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee.

12. ON STUDIES :

Some books are to be tasted, and some few chewed and digested.
JULIUS CÆSAR, Act i.:

Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this;
Brutus had rather be a villager.

13. Trench says "Essays" was a new word in Bacon's time, and his use of it quite novel. Bacon thus writes of his Essays:

Which I have called Essays. The word is late, though the thing is ancient.

Mrs. Clarke, in her Concordance, reports the word Essay as occurring twice in Shakespeare, which, indeed, is true of Knight's Shakespeare; but it only occurs once

in the Folio of 1623, in relation to Edgar's letter to Edmund, in Lear. Edmund says,—

I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or task of my nature.

I have not included the example furnished by your correspondent. The allusion to "perspectives in Richard II., and the simile of Acteon in Twelfth Night, are worthy of remark.

I send these in the hope that your correspondents will add to them.*

The learned and obliging correspondents of "Notes and Queries" may save themselves the trouble; for innumerable instances of this description would not, more particularly in the teeth of the actual evidence we possess of Shakespeare's right to be regarded as the author of these plays, prop up the Baconian theory.

Anxious to meet Mr. William Henry Smith upon his own favourite and peculiar ground, we would ask, how is it possible that the slightest importance can be attached to these passages, paraded with so much satisfaction? Were they word for word and line for line alike, they would not be sufficient to prove, nor could a hundred such coincidences be regarded as a proof, that Lord Bacon wrote the dramas of Shakespeare. The majority have not sufficient in common to be called parallel passages; and if we select those most entitled to the appellation, what do they establish? Nothing more nor less than that Bacon did not hesitate to borrow an idea from his mighty contemporary. With views too exalted for the comprehension of the smaller fry of critics, the founder of the new philosophy was not afraid of showing that great

The

*Notes and Queries, Second Series, No. 52, p. 503. punctuation in these quotations is wretched; and why should the reference to particular acts and scenes be given in some instances and not in others?

minds may put forth similar ideas and sentiments without dread of incurring a charge of plagiarism.

We cannot admit that these are parallel passages were we willing to do so, the admission would be of no advantage to Mr. William Henry Smith. His quotations might show that Bacon had borrowed from Shakespeare: this is their only moral. With one exception, which shall be noticed in due course, their testimony is to this effect. Nos. 2 and 10 contain passages from essays written by Lord Bacon, which were not published until some years after Shakespeare's death, and the appearance of the first folio. The essays on Buildings and on Adversity are not found in any edition of Bacon's Essays previous to 1625. A pretty fact this to bring forward in favour of a theory that Lord Bacon wrote the dramas of Shakespeare. He might have seen them acted, and conned them over in his library hundreds of times, before he put forth a composition tinged with the magic hues of some of their richest thoughts. In the quotations given under No. 1, a certain degree of similarity will be found to exist between a passage in the "Advancement of Learning," and the comedy of "Twelfth Night." Bacon's treatise was first published in 1605, whereas "Twelfth Night" had been acted as early as 1602, if not before. In No. 6 on the list, we find a sentiment in Bacon's Apophthegms, first published in 1625, which resembles a passage in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," which was printed in 1602. Again, in No. 11, passages in "Richard II.," printed in 1597, and "Hamlet," in 1603, are similar to a sentence in Bacon's "Life of Henry the Seventh," which was written in 1616, and published in 1622. These facts, if they prove anything at all, would, like those to which we have already alluded in Nos. 2 and 10, show that Lord Bacon had studied Shakespeare to some purpose.

"But," Mr. William Henry Smith will probably exclaim, with an air of aggravated triumph, "you have not referred to the fifth instance in the list, in which a clear case of similarity is etablished between a passage in Lord Bacon's

« السابقةمتابعة »