Quantum Theory In The Elizabethan Age?

Funny how quantum theory and particle annihilation can have in some way been thought about by Elizabethan poets. Yet, strange as it may seem, two poets of the golden age, Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare, may have had these seemingly paradoxical thoughts. Were they ahead of their time? Did they have a crystal ball?

Let's see two of the sonnets that contain the paradoxes.

Here is Sir Philip Sidney's Sonnet 60 from the series "Astrophel and Stella":

When my good Angell guides me to the place
Where all my good I doe in Stella see,
That heau'n of ioyes throwes onely downe on me
Thundring disdaines and lightnings of disgrace;
But when the ruggedst step of Fortunes race
Makes me fall from her sight, then sweetly she,
With words wherein the Muses treasures be,
Shewes loue and pitie to my absent case.
Now I, wit-beaten long by hardest fate,
So dull am, that I cannot looke into
The ground of this fierce loue and louely hate.
Then, some good body, tell me how I do,
Whose presence absence, absence presence is;
Blest in my curse, and cursed in my blisse.

Here now is Shakespeare's Sonnet 45:

The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide,
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life being made of four, with two alone,
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.
Until life's composition be recured,
By those swift messengers returned from thee,
Who even but now come back again assured,
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.
This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,
I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Sidney, in line thirteen uses, "presence absence, absence presence", which refers to a this love - hate he feels simultaneously -- there and not there, perhaps at the same time. Shakespeare in line four uses, "present-absent," which is a paradox. Shakespeare seems to be saying that thought and desire are both present and absent at once.
Maybe they were just playing with words and not with an incredible idea akin to something being a wave and a particle at the same time a la quantum theory. If there is the presence of absence, then, whatever the subject may be, it is not there. Absence presence could mean the subject is not there -- an absence of presence!

I have no idea of course, but I do wonder what they were really thinking.

And there is another possible meaning for the use of present-absent (Shakespeare) and presence absence (Sidney) and that is that the appearance and disappearance of the entities referred occurred so quickly that they seemed to be and not to be simultaneously. Hah, that makes me think of Hamlet's puzzling "to be or not to be" query ... It seems as though Shakespeare was really caught up in all of this being and non-being stuff. I guess we all are.


Here are the links for these sonnets:

Sir Philip Sidney http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/stella.html
William Shakespeare http://poetry.eserver.org/sonnets/045.html