Both believed, despite the discoveries of Galileo, that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the heavens revolved around it. Later in his life Bacon seemed to accept the new theories, but at the time the Plays were written he repudiated them. He says: Who would not smile at the astronomers, I mean not these new carmen which drive the earth about,1 Again he says: It is a poor center of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth, for that only stands fast upon his own center; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the center of another, which they benefit." While Shakespeare also rejected the new theories. He says in Hamlet: Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move.3 Again he says: The heavens themselves, the planets and this center, And in the same play he says: But the strong base and building of my love Is as the very center of the earth, . Drawing all things to it." 1 Essay In Praise of Knowledge, 1590 -Life and Works, vol. i, p. 124. 2 Essay Of Wisdom. 3 Hamlet, ii, 2. ▲ Troilus and Cressida, i, 3. I CHAPTER VII. THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS. Letter for letter! Why, this is the very same: the very hand: the very words. HAVE already shown, in the first chapter of Book I., the tendency manifested in the Plays to use unusual words, especially those derived from or constructed out of the Latin. I may add to the list already given the following instances: And all things rare That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.' Cowards and men cautelous.2 No soil or cautel. Through all the world's vastidity.a Such exsufflicate and blown surmises." His pendant bed and procreant cradle. Thou vinew'dst leaven." Rend and deracinate.8 Thou cacadamon.o We have a very crowding of words, unusual in poetry, into the following lines: As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, All these things bespeak the scholar, overflowing with Roman learning and eager to enrich his mother-tongue by the coinage of new words. It is not too much to say that Bacon has doubled the capacity of the English language. He was aware of this fact himself, and in his Discourse in Praise of Queen Elizabeth he says that the tongue of England "has been infinitely polished since her happy times." 1 Sonnet xxi. 2 Julius Cæsar, ii, 1. 3 Hamlet, i, 3. 4 Measure for Measure, iii, 1. Othello, iii, 3. 7 Troilus and Cressida, ii, 1. • Ibid., i, 3. • Richard III., i, 3. 10 Troilus and Cressida, i, 3. We find in Bacon's prose works the same tendency to coin or transfer words bodily from the Latin. I give a few examples: "Coarctation," "percutient," "mordication," "carnosities," "the ingurgitation of wine," incomprehensions," "arefaction," "flexuous courses of nature," "exulcerations," "reluctation," 'embarred," "digladiation," "vermiculate questions," "morigeration,” “redargution,” “maniable,” “ventosity.” But we will also find, in both sets of writings, a disposition to use quaint, odd and unusual words, borrowed, many of them, from that part of common speech which rarely finds its way into print,the colloquialisms of the shop and the street, and we will find many of them that are used in the same sense by both Bacon and Shakespeare. Macbeth says: I pull in resolution, and begin To doubt the equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth.1 The commentators have been puzzled with this word, but we have it also in Bacon: Those smells are all strong, and do pull and vellicate the sense. To vellicate is to twitch convulsively. We find in Hamlet the strange word pall: Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When our dear plots do pall.3 We turn to Bacon and we find him using the same word: And again: The refreshing or quickening of drink palled or dead.3 In Bacon we have: For if they go forth right to a place, they must needs have sight." Shakespeare says: Shakespeare says: The gods that keep such a pudder o'er our heads.1 This word occurs but on this occasion in the Plays. It means bother. There is a word in Henry V-imbar - which has excited considerable controversy among the commentators. It occurs in the discussion of the Salic law of France: So that as clear as is the summer's sun, So do the kings of France unto this day: Howbeit they would hold up this Salic law, To bar your Highness claiming from the female; Than amply to imbar their crooked titles I quote Knight's foot-note upon this word: Imbar. The Folio gives this word imbarre, which modern editors, upon the authority of Theobald, have changed into imbare. Rowe, somewhat more boldly, reads make bare. There can be no doubt, we think, that imbar is the right word. It might be taken as placed in opposition to bar. To bar is to obstruct; to imbar is to bar in, to secure. They would hold up the Salic law "to bar your Highness," hiding "their crooked titles" in a net rather than amply defending them. But it has been suggested to us that imbar is here used for "to set at the bar❞—to place their crooked titles before a proper tribunal. This is ingenious and plausible. I quote these comments to show that the word is a rare and obscure one. The two words, bar and imbar, seem to me to mean substantially the same thing; as we find plead and implead, personate and impersonate, plant and implant. If there is any difference, it consists in the fact that bar means, as suggested by Knight, to shut out, and imbar to shut in. In the sentence under consideration it seems that both the title of the reigning French King and the claim of King Henry V. came through the female line, and the Archbishop of Canterbury shows that the French, while their King holds in contravention of the Salic law, yet set it up as a bar to the claim of the English King, also holding through the female line, and thus involve themselves in a net or tangle of contradictions, instead of amply, fully, and on other and substantial grounds, imbarring their titles, inclosing them and defending them from the world. And here again, where we would find the explanation of obscure words in Shakespeare, we are driven to Bacon. In his History of Henry VII. he says: The King forthwith banished all Flemings. . . out of his kingdom; commanding his subjects likewise, and by name his merchants adventurers, which had a reisance in Antwerp, to return; translating the mart, which commonly followed the English cloth, unto Calais; and embarred also all further trade for the future. Here we get at the meaning of the word. He not only drove the Flemish merchants out of his country and recalled his own merchants resident in Flanders, and changed the foreign mart, but he also embarred all further trade- that is, denied the Flemish commerce access to his people. And it is a curious fact that in our great American dictionary (Webster's Unabridged) the two words, embarred and imbare, are given the first with the above quotation from Bacon, and the other with the example of the word from Henry V., with a meaning attached, created to suit the emergency, " to lay bare, to uncover, to expose." So that, to attempt to read Shakespeare without Bacon, the commentators are driven to coin new words "which never were, and no man ever saw." We read in Shakespeare: How cam'st thou to be the siege of this mooncalf? 1 J. O. Halliwell says in a foot-note upon this passage: A mooncalf is an imperfectly-developed fœtus, here metaphorically applied to a misshapen monster. But we turn to Bacon, and there we find the real explanation: It may be that children and young cattle that are brought forth in the full of the moon are stronger and larger than those which are brought forth in the wane; and those, also, which are begotten in the full of the moon [are stronger and larger].2 So that the term was applied to Caliban with reference to his gross proportions. The curious word starting-hole occurs but once in the Plays, in Falstaff's interview with the Prince,' after the robbery on Gads-hill; and it is so rare that it is made the foundation of a foot 1 Tempest, ii, 2. Natural History, § 897. 1st Henry IV., ii, 4. |