Love is merely (wholly) a madness. SHAKESPEARE (As you like it III. 2.) 1623. Love is a madness. DEKKER (Old Fortunatus III. 1.) 1600. Are you not ashamed to make Yourself a slave to the base lord of love Begot of fancy and of beauty born? CHAPMAN (All Fools 1. 1.) 1604-1605. What uncouth fit, what malady is this that thou dost prove ? ....Love's our common wrack That gives us bane to bring us low and lets us medicine lack. PEELE (Arraignment of Paris) 1584. Love is a discord and a strange divorce GREENE (Menaphon) 1589. Love.... puzzles reason, distracts the freedom of the soul, renders a wise man a fool, and a fool wise in's own conceit-not else. FORD (Fancies Chaste and Noble III. 3.) 1638. Love is but a straggling from our reason. SHIRLEY (Witty Fair One 1. 2.) 1628-1633. Love is a consuming of wit and restoring of folly, a staring blindness and a blind gazing. LYLY (Love's Metamorphosis III. 1.) 1601. Love, is anything more ridiculous ? SHIRLEY (Hyde Park 1. 2.) 1637. It is not granted men to love and be wise. BACON (Advancement of Learning) 1605. The Gods themselves cannot be wise and love. MARSTON (Dutch Courtezan II. 1.) 1605. To be wise and love exceeds man's might; that dwells with Gods above. SHAKESPEARE (Troilus and Cressida III. 2.) LOVE CELESTIAL 1609. My praise shall be dedicated to the happiest state of mind, to the noblest affection. I shall teach lovers to love, that have all this while loved by rote. I shall give them the alphabet of love. BACON (Conference of Pleasure) 1591-1592. Sweet Love devoid of villainy or ill, But pure and spotless as at first he sprung Out of th' Almighty's bosom where he nests, From thence infuséd into mortal breasts. Such high conceit of that celestial fire The base born brood of blindness cannot guess, Nor ever dare their dunghill thoughts aspire Unto so lofty pitch of perfectness. SPENSER (Tears of the Muses) 1611. 'Tis rather to instruct deceived mankind And scorns to be received a guest but in MASSINGER (Parliament of Love) 1624. Most sacred fire that burnest mightily Amongst the eternal spheres and lamping sky, [Love, Not that same which doth base affections move SPENSER (Fairy Queen III. III.) 1590-1609. What thing is love? It is a power divine GREENE (Menaphon) 1589. No mortal passion, but a supernatural influence. IBID (Morando) 1587. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love is not love unless love doth perséver, That love is perfect love that loves for ever. MARSTON (Insatiate Countess II. 3.) 1613. In their threefold treatment of Love as creeping, a madness and a Celestial influence, Bacon and the dramatists are all equally consistent in their inconsistencies. It is a popular impression that Bacon knew nothing about this subject, but he himself thought differently. " I shall, says he, "teach lovers to love. This passage occurs in the Conference of Pleasure forming one of the pieces contained in the Northumberland House Manuscript discussed in the preceding chapter. Mr. Edwin Reed notes some very remarkable parallelisms between this MS. and Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. I conclude this chapter by quoting them. SHAKESPEARE (circa Love gives to every power Is not love a Hercules ? BACON (circa 1591-2) Love gives the mind power to exceed itself. The eye, where love beginneth. What fortune can be such a Hercules [as love] ? Love... with the motion Love is the motion that of all elements. But for my love.... where nothing wants, that want itself doth seek. They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars. animateth all things. When we want nothing, there is the reason and the opportunity and the spring of love. Lovers never thought their profession sufficiently graced till they had compared it to a warfare. CHAPTER XIII. ERROR, WIT AND METAPHOR Bacon, who acquired his knowledge of Natural History less from experience than from books, refers in his Apophthegms to "the King in a hive of bees." This is an error probably derived from Virgil. It is now a matter of common knowledge that bees have no king, but a queen. The dramatists sound a similar false note. The honey bees.... have a King. SHAKESPEARE (Henry V. 1. 2.) 1600. The bees swarm to preserve the king of bees. LYLY (Midas III. 1.) 1592. A peaceful King [of bees]. DAY (Parliament of Bees 1.) 1641. Their King [of bees]. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Elder Brother 1. 1.)1637. In the Advancement of Learning (1603-5) Bacon writes: "Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be recorded wherein he saith that young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy ? This is another slip. Aristotle refers to political not moral philosophy; nevertheless, Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher similarly misquote him. |