Section II Heraldic Emblems, or Emblems Applied to Heraldry.
KNOTTED together as are Emblems and the very language of Heraldry, we must expect to find Emblem writers devoting some at least of their inventions to heraldic purposes. This has been done to a very considerable extent by the Italians, especially by Paolo Giovio, Domenichi, Ruscelli, and Symeoni; but in several other authors also there occur heraldic devices among their more general emblems. These are not full coats of arms and the complete emblazonnes of “the gentleman’s science,” but rather cognizances, or badges, by which persons and families of note may be distinguished. In this respect Shakespeare entirely agrees with the Emblem writers; neither he nor they give us the quarterings complete, but they single out for honourable mention some prominent mark or sign.
I attempt not to arrange the subject according to the Rules of the Art, but to exhibit instances in which Shakespeare and the Emblematists agree, of Poetic Heraldry, the Heraldry of Reward for Heroic Achievements, and the Heraldry of Imaginative Devices.
Of Poetic Heraldry the chief type is that bird of renown, which was a favourite with Shakespeare, and from which he has been named by general consent, “the Swan of Avon.” A white swan upon a shield occurs both in Alciat and in Whitney, and is expressly named Insignia Poetarum,—“The poets’ ensigns.”
The swan, in fact, was sacred to Apollo and the Muses; and hence was supposed to be musical. Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, makes Cassandra speak of the fable, when the Chorus bewail her sad destiny (vv. 1322, 3),—
“Ἃπαξ ἔπ’ εἰπεῖν ῥῆσιν ἢ θρῆνον θέλω
ἐμὸν τὸν αὐτῆς.”
i.e.,—“Yet once again I wish for her to speak forth prophecy or lamentation, even my own,”—and Clytæmnēstra mentions the singing of the swan at the point of death (vv. 1444–7),—
“Ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὕτως· ἡ δέ τοι κύκνου δίκην
τὸν ὓστατον μέλψασα θανάσιμον γόον
κεῖται φίλητωρ, τοῦδ’, ἐμοὶ δ’ ἐπηγαγεν
εὐνης παροψώνημα τῆς ἐμῆς χλιδῆς.”
Which is to this effect: that when she has sung the last mortal lamentation, according to the custom of the swan, she lies down as a lover, and offers to me the solace of the bed of my joy.
This notion of the singing of the swan is to be traced even to the hieroglyphics of Egypt. In answer to the question, “Πῶς γέροντα μουσικόν·”—how to represent “an old man musical?”—Horapollo, edition Paris, 1551, p. 136, replies,—
“Ιἐροντα μουσικὸν βουλόμενοι σημῇναι, κύκνον ζωγραφοῦσιν. οὑ~τος γαρ ἡδύτατον μέλος ᾅδει γηράσκων.”
i.e.—“Wishing to signify an old man musical, they paint a swan; for this bird sings its sweetest melody when growing old.” Virgil frequently speaks of swans, both as melodious and as shrill voiced. Thus in the Æneid, vii. 700–3; xi. 457,—
“Cum sese è pastu referunt, et longa canoros
Dant per colla modos: sonat amnis et Asia longè
Pulsa palus.”
i.e.—“When they return from feeding, and through their long necks give forth melodious measures; the river resounds and the Asian marsh from far.”
“Piscosóve amne Padusæ
Dant sonitum rauci per stagna loquacia cycni.”[119]
i.e.—“Or on the fish-abounding river Po the hoarse swans give forth a sound through the murmuring pools.”
Horace, Carm. iv. 2. 25, names Pindar Dircæum cycnum,—“the Dircæan swan;” and Carm. ii. 20. 10, likens himself to an album alitem,—“a white-winged creature;” which a few lines further on he terms a canorus ales,—“a melodious bird,”—and speaks of his apotheosis to immortal fame.[120]
Anacreon is called by Antipater of Sidon, Anthol. Græc. Carm. 76, κύκνος Τηϊος,—“the Teïan swan.”
Poets, too, after death, were fancifully supposed to assume the form of swans. It was believed also that swans foresaw their own death, and previously sang their own elegy. Thus in Ovid, Metam. xiv. 430,—
“Carmina jam monens canit exequialia Cygnus,”—
“Now dying the Swan chants its funereal songs.”
Very beautifully does Plato advert to this fiction in his account of the conversation of Socrates with his friends on the day of his execution. (See Phædon, Francfort edition, 1602, p. 77, 64A.) They were fearful of causing him trouble and vexation; but he reminds them they should not think him inferior in foresight to the swans; for these,—
“Fall a singing, as soon as they perceive that they are about to die, and sing far more sweetly than at any former time, being glad that they are about to go away to the God whose servants they are.... They possess the power of prophesying, and foreseeing the blessings of Hades they sing and rejoice exceedingly. Now I imagine that I am also a fellow-servant with the Swans and sacred to the same God, and that I have received from the same Master a power of foresight not inferior to theirs, so that I could depart from life itself with a mind no more cast down.”
Thus the melodious dirge of the swan was attributed to the same kind of prescience which enables good men to look forward with delight to that time “when this mortal shall put on immortality.”
The “Picta Poesis,” p. 28, adopts the same fancy of the swan singing at the end of life, but makes it the emblem of “old age eloquent.” Thus,—
“Facvnda Senectvs.
“Candida Cygnus auis suprema ætate canora est:
Inquam verti homines tabula picta docet,
Nam sunt canitie Cygni dulciq. canore,
Virtute illustres, eloquioque senes.
Dulce vetus vinum: senis est oratio dulcis,
Dulcior hoc ipso quò sapientior est.”
i.e.—“At the end of life tuneful is the bird, the white swan, into which the painted tablet teaches that men are changed, for swans are illustrious from hoariness and the sweet singing, old men illustrious for virtue and for eloquence. Old wine is sweet; of an old man sweet is the speech; sweeter, for this very cause, the wiser it is.”
Shakespeare himself adopts this notion in the Merchant of Venice (act i. sc. 2, l. 24, vol. ii. p. 286), when he says, “Holy men at their death have good inspirations.”
Reusner, however, luxuriating in every variety of silvery and snowy whiteness, represents the swan as especially the symbol of the pure simplicity of truth. (Emblemata, lib. ii. 31, pp. 91, 92, ed. 1581.)
i.e.—“Than a white swan what is brighter,—than silver, snow, the lily, the privet? Bright faith and bright morals,—and the bright mind of a bright companion. That thou of good morals, O Schedius Melissus, dost possess snow-like faith, and the bright mind of an uncorrupted companion;—that (thou art) more fair than the snowy privet,—more blessed than the snowy silver,—more fragrant than the white lilies,—more comely than the little bright swans,—the snowy swan on thy arms doth teach: a swan handsome with white lilies, encircled as to its features with the laurel of Phœbus; a swan brighter than the white privet,—more precious than the blessed silver; to which cannot be equalled the comeliness of ivory, or of gold; nor the worth and the splendour of a beautiful gem: and if in the world there is any thing more beautiful still.”
To a short, but very learned dissertation on the subject, and to the device of a swan on a tomb, in his work, De Volatilibus, edition 1595, Emb. 23, Joachim Camerarius affixes the motto, “Sibi canit et orbi,”—It sings for itself and for the world,—
“Ipsa suam celebrat sibi mens bene conscia mortem,
Vt solet herbiferum Cygnus ad Eridanum.”
i.e.—“The mind conscious of good celebrates its own death for itself; as the swan is accustomed to do on the banks of the grassy Eridanus.”[121]
Shakespeare’s expressions, however, as to the swan, correspond more closely with the stanzas of Alciat (edition Lyons, 1551, p. 197) which are contained in the woodcut on next page.
Whitney (p. 126) adopts the same ideas, but enlarges upon them, and brings out a clearer moral interpretation, fortifying himself with quotations from Ovid, Reusner, and Horace,—
“The Martiall Captaines ofte, do marche into the fielde,
With Egles, or with Griphins fierce, or Dragons, in theire shielde.
But Phœbus sacred birde, let Poëttes moste commende.
Who, as it were by skill deuine, with songe forshowes his ende.
And as his tune delightes: for rarenes of the same.
So they with sweetenes of theire verse, shoulde winne a lasting name.
And as his colour white: Sincerenes doth declare.
So Poëttes must bee cleane, and pure, and must of crime beware.
For which respectes the Swanne, should in their Ensigne stande.
No forren fowle, and once suppos’de kinge of Ligvria Lande.”
In the very spirit of these Emblems of the Swan, the great dramatist fashions some of his poetical images and most tender descriptions. Thus in King John (act v. sc. 7, lines 1–24, vol. iv. p. 91), in the Orchard Scene at Swinstead Abbey, the king being in his mortal sickness, Prince Henry demands, “Doth he still rage?” And Pembroke replies,—
“He is more patient
Than when you left him; even now he sung.
P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes
In their continuance will not feel themselves.
Death, having prey’d upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now
Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds
With many legions of strange fantasies,
Which in their throng and press to that last hold,
Confound themselves. ’Tis strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.”
To the same purport, in Henry VIII. (act iv. sc. 2, l. 77, vol. vi. p. 88), are the words of Queen Katharine, though she does not name the poet’s bird,—
“I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith,
Cause the musicians play me that sad note
I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating
On that celestial harmony I go to.”
And in the Casket Scene, so often alluded to (Merchant of Venice, act iii. sc. 2, l. 41, vol. ii. p. 325), when Bassanio is about to try his fortune, Portia thus addresses him,—
“If you do love me, you will find me out.
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof.
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music: that the comparison
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream,
And watery death-bed for him. He may win;
And what is music then? Then music is
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
To a new-crowned monarch: such it is
As are those dulcet sounds in break of day
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear
And summon him to marriage.”
In the sad ending, too, of the Moor of Venice (act v. sc. 2, l. 146, vol. viii. p. 581), after Othello had said of Desdemona,—
“Nay, had she been true,
If heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,
I’d not have sold her for it:”
and the full proof of innocence having been brought forward, Emilia desires to be laid by her dead “Mistress’ side,” and inquires mournfully (l. 249, p. 586),—
“What did thy song bode, lady?
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,
And die in music. [Singing.] Willow, willow, willow.
Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor,
So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true;
So speaking as I think, I die, I die. [Dies.]”
After this long dissertation anent swans, there may be readers who will press hard upon me with the couplet from Coleridge,—
“Swans sing before they die: ’twere no bad thing,
Should certain persons die before they sing.”
From Heraldry itself the Midsummer Night’s Dream (act iii. sc. 2, l. 201, vol. ii. p. 239) borrows one of its most beautiful comparisons; it is in the passage where Helena so passionately reproaches Hermia for supposed treachery,—
“O, is all forgot?
All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted;
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.”
In speaking of the Heraldry of Heroic Achievements, we may refer to the “wreath of chivalry” (p. 168), already described from the Pericles. There were, however, other wreaths which the Romans bestowed as the rewards of great and noble exploits. Several of these are set forth by the Emblem writers; we will select one from Whitney (p. 115), Fortiter & feliciter,—“Bravely and happily.”
To this device of an armed hand grasping a spear, on which are hanging four garlands or crowns of victory, the stanzas are,—
“Marc Sergivs nowe, I maye recorde by righte,
A Romane boulde, whome foes coulde not dismaye:
Gainste Hannibal hee often shewde his mighte,
Whose righte hande loste, his lefte hee did assaye
Vntill at lengthe an iron hande hee proou’d:
And after that Cremona siege remoou’d.
Then, did defende Placentia in distresse,
And wanne twelue houldes, by dinte of sworde in France,
What triumphes great? were made for his successe,
Vnto what state did fortune him aduance?
What speares? what crounes? what garlandes hee possest;
The honours due for them, that did the beste.”
Of such honours, like poets generally, Shakespeare often tells. After the triumph at Barnet (3 Henry VI., act v. sc. 3, l. 1, vol. v. p. 324), King Edward says to his friends,—
“Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course,
And we are grac’d with wreaths of victory.”
Wreaths of honour and of victory are figured by Joachim Camerarius, “Ex Re Herbaria,” edition 1590, in the 99th Emblem. The laurel, the oak, and the olive garlands are ringed together; the motto being, “His ornari avt mori,”—With these to be adorned or to die,—
“Fronde oleæ, lauri, quercus contexta corolla
Me decoret, sine qua viuere triste mihi,”—
i.e.
“From bough of olive, laurel, oak, a woven crown
Adorns me, without which to live is sadness to me.”
Among other illustrations are quoted the words of the Iliad, which are applied to Hector, τεθνάτω, οὔ οἱ ἀεικὲς ἀμυνομένω περὶ πάτρης,—“Let death come, it is not unbecoming to him who dies defending his country.”
Of the three crowns two are named (3 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 6, l. 32, vol. v. p. 309), when Warwick rather blames the king for preferring him to Clarence, and Clarence replies,—
“No, Warwick, thou art worthy of the sway,
To whom the heavens in thy nativity
Adjudged an olive branch and laurel crown,
As likely to be blest in peace and war,
And therefore I yield thee my free consent.”
The introduction to King Richard III. (act i. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. v. p. 473) opens suddenly with Gloster’s declaration,—
“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds, that lour’d upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean bury’d.”
“Sun of York” is a direct allusion to the heraldic cognizance which Edward IV. adopted, “in memory,” we are told, “of the three suns,” which are said to have appeared at the battle which he gained over the Lancastrians at Mortimer’s Cross. Richard then adds,—
“Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.”
We meet, too, in the Pericles (act ii. sc. 3, l. 9, vol. ix. p. 345) with the words of Thaisa to the victor,—
“But you, my knight and guest;
To whom this wreath of victory I give,
And crown you king of this day’s happiness.”
But in the pure Roman manner, and according to the usage of Emblematists, Shakespeare also tells of “victors’ crowns;” following, as would appear, “Les Devises Heroiqves” of Paradin, edition Anvers, 1562, f. 147 verso, which contains several instances of garlands for noble brows. Of these, one is entitled, Seruati gratia ciuis,—“For sake of a citizen saved.”
The garland is thus described in Paradin’s French,—
“La Courõne, apellee Ciuique, eſtoit dõnee par le Citoyẽ, au Citoyẽ qu’il auoit ſauué en guerre: en repreſentatiõ de vie ſauuee. Et eſtoit cete Courõne, tiſſue de fueilles, ou petis rameaus de Cheſne: pour autãt qu’au Cheſne, la vielle antiquité, ſouloit prẽdre ſa ſubſtãce, ſõ mãger, ou sa nourriture.”
i.e.—“The crown called Civic was given by the Citizen to the Citizen[122] whom he had saved in war; in testimony of life saved. And this Crown was an inweaving of leaves or small branches of Oak; inasmuch as from the Oak, old antiquity was accustomed to take its subsistence, its food, or its nourishment.”
“Among the rewards” for the Roman soldiery, remarks Eschenburg (Manual of Classical Literature, p. 274), “golden or gilded crowns were particularly common; as, the corona castrensis, or vallaris, to him who first entered the enemy’s entrenchments; corona muralis, to him who first scaled the enemy’s walls; and corona navalis, for seizing a vessel of the enemy in a sea-fight; also wreaths and crowns formed of leaves and blossoms; as the corona civica, of oak leaves, conferred for freeing a citizen from death or captivity at the hands of the enemy; the corona obsidionalis, of grass, for delivering a besieged city; and the corona triumphalis, of laurel, worn by a triumphing general.”
Shakespeare’s acquaintance with these Roman customs we find, where we should expect it to be, in the Coriolanus and in the Julius Cæsar. Let us take the instances; first, from the Coriolanus, act i. sc. 9, l. 58, vol. vi. p. 304; act i. sc. 3, l. 7, p. 287; act ii. sc. 2, l. 84, p. 323; and act ii. sc. 1, l. 109, p. 312. Cominius thanks the gods that “our Rome hath such a soldier” as Caius Marcius, and declares (act i. sc. 9, l. 58),—
“Therefore, be it known,
As to us, to all the world, that Caius Marcius
Wears this war’s garland: in token of the which,
My noble steed, known to the camp, I give him,
With all his trim belonging; and from this time.
For what he did before Corioli, call him,
With all the applause and clamour of the host,
Caius Marcius Coriolanus. Bear
The addition nobly ever!”
With most motherly pride Volumnia rehearses the brave deed to Virgilia, her son’s wife (act i. sc. 3, l. 7),—
“When, for a day of kings’ entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding; I, considering how honour would become such a person; that it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir, was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.”
And the gaining of that early renown is most graphically drawn by Cominius, the consul (act ii. sc. 2, l. 84),—
“At sixteen years,
When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought
Beyond the mark of others: our then dictator,
Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,
When with his Amazonian chin he drove
The bristled lips before him: he bestrid
An o'er press’d Roman, and i’ the consul’s view
Slew three opposers: Tarquin’s self he met,
And struck him on his knee: in that day’s feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He proved best man i’ the field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age
Man-enter’d thus, he waxed like a sea;
And, in the brunt of seventeen battles since,
He lurch’d all swords of the garland.”
The successful general is expected in Rome, and this dialogue is held between Menenius, Virgilia, and Volumnia (act ii. sc. 1, l. 109, p. 312),—
“Men. Is he not wounded? he was wont to come home wounded.
Vir. O, no, no, no.
Vol. O, he is wounded; I thank the gods for’t.
Men. So do I too, if it be not too much: brings a’ victory in his pocket? The wounds become him.
Vol. On’s brows: Menenius, he comes the third time home with the oaken garland.”
Next, we have an instance from the Julius Cæsar (act v. sc. 3, l. 80, vol. vii. p. 409), on the field of Philippi, when “in his red blood Cassius’ day is set,” Titanius asks,—
“Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius?
Did I not meet thy friends? and did not they
Put on my brows this wreath of victory,
And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts?
Alas, thou hast misconstrued every thing!
But, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow;
Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I
Will do his bidding.”
The heraldry of honours from sovereign princes, as testified to, both by Paradin in his “Devises Heroiqves,” edition Antwerp, 1562, folio 12v, and 25, 26, and by Shakespeare, embraces but two or three instances, and is comprised in the magniloquent lines (1 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 7, l. 60, vol. v. p. 80) in which Sir William Lucy inquires,—
“But where’s the great Alcides of the field,
Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,
Created, for his rare success in arms,
Great Earl of Washford, Waterford and Valence;
Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,
Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton,
Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield,
The thrice-victorious Lord of Falconbridge:
Knight of the noble order of Saint George,
Worthy Saint Michael and the Golden Fleece;
Great marshal to Henry the Sixth
Of all his wars within the realm of France?”
From Paradin we learn that the Order of St. Michael had for its motto Immensi tremor Oceani,—“The trembling of the immeasurable ocean,”—and for its badge the adjoining collar.—
“This order was instituted by Louis XI., King of France, in the year 1469.[123] He directed for its ensign and device a collar of gold, made with shells laced together in a double row, held firm upon little chains or meshes of gold; in the middle of which collar on a rock was a gold-image of Saint Michael, appearing in the front. And this the king did (with respect to the Archangel) in imitation of King Charles VII. his father; who had formerly borne that image as his ensign, even at his entry into Rouen. By reason always (it is said) of the apparition, on the bridge of Orleans, of Saint Michael defending the city against the English in a famous attack. This collar then of the royal order and device of the Knights of the same is the sign or true ensign of their nobleness, virtue, concord, fidelity and friendship; Pledge, reward and remuneration of their valour and prowess. By the richness and purity of the gold are pointed out their high rank and grandeur; by the similarity or likeness of its shells, their equality, or the equal fraternity of the Order (following the Roman senators, who also bore shells on their arms for an ensign and a device); by the double lacing of them together, their invincible and indissoluble union; and by the image of Saint Michael, victory over the most dangerous enemy. A device then instituted for the solace, protection and assurance of this so noble a kingdom; and, on the contrary, for the terror, dread and confusion of the enemies of the same.”
Precium non vile laborum,—
“No mean reward of labours.”
Paradin (f. 25) is also our authority with respect to the Order of the Golden Fleece, its motto and device being thus presented:—
“The order of the Golden Fleece,” says Paradin, “was instituted by Philip, Duke of Burgundy, styled the Good, in the year 1429, for which he named[124] twenty-four Knights without reproach, besides himself, as chief and founder, and gave to each one of them for ensign of the said Order a Collar of gold composed of his device of the Fusil, with the Fleece of gold appearing in front; and this (as people say) was in imitation of that which Jason acquired in Colchis, taken customarily for Virtue, long so much loved by this good Duke, that he merited this surname of Goodness, and other praises contained on his Epitaph, where there is mention made of this Order of the Fleece, in the person of the Duke saying,—
'Pour maintenir l’Eglise, qui est de Dieu maison,
J’ai mis sus le noble Ordre, qu’on nomme la Toison.'”
The expedition of the Argonauts, and Jason’s carrying off of the Golden Fleece may here be appropriately mentioned; they are referred to by the Emblem writers, as well as the exploit of Phrixus, the brother of Helle, in swimming across the Hellespont on the golden-fleeced ram. The former Whitney introduces when describing the then new and wonderful circumnavigation of the globe by Sir Francis Drake (p. 203),—
“Let Græcia then forbeare, to praise her Iason boulde?
Who throughe the watchfull dragons pass’d, to win the fleece of goulde.
Since by Medeas helpe, they weare inchaunted all,
And Iason without perrilles, pass’de: the conqueste therfore small?
But, hee, of whome I write, this noble minded Drake,
Did bringe away his goulden fleece, when thousand eies did wake.”
Diues indoctus.
Tranat aquas reſidẽs precioſo in vellere Phrixus,
Et flauam impauidus per mare ſcandit ouem.
Ecquid id est? vir ſenſu hebeti, ſed diuite gaza,
Coniugis aut ſerui quem regit arbitrium.
The latter forms the subject of one of Alciat’s Emblems, edition Antwerp, 1581, Emb. 189, in which, seated on the precious fleece, Phrixus crosses the waters, and fearless in the midst of the sea mounts the tawny sheep, the type of “the rich man unlearned.” Whitney (p. 214) substitutes In diuitem, indoctum,—“To the rich man, unlearned,”—and thus paraphrases the original,—
“On goulden fleece, did Phryxus passe the waue,
And landed safe, within the wished baie:
By which is ment, the fooles that riches haue,
Supported are, and borne throughe Lande, and Sea:
And those enrich’de by wife, or seruauntes goodds,
Are borne by them like Phryxus through the floodds.”
In a similar emblem, Beza, edition Geneva, 1580, Emb. 3, alludes to the daring deed of Phrixus,—
“Aurea mendaci vates non vnicvs ore
Vellera phrixeæ commemorauit ouis.
Nos, te, Christe, agnum canimus. Nam diuite gestas
Tu verè veras vellere solus opes.”
Thus rendered in the French version,—
“Maint poete discourt de sa bouche menteuse
Sur vne toison d’or. Nous, à iuste raison,
Te chantons, Christ, agneau, dont la riche toison
Est l’vnique thresor qui rend l’Eglise heureuse.”
The Merchant of Venice (act. i. sc. 1, l. 161, vol. ii. p. 284) presents Shakespeare’s counterpart to the Emblematists; it is in Bassanio’s laudatory description of Portia, as herself the golden fleece,—
“In Belmont is a lady richly left;
And she is fair, and, fairer than that word,
Of wondrous virtues: sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages:
Her name is Portia; nothing undervalued
To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia:
Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth;
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors: and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece:
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.”
To this may be added a line or two by Gratiano, l. 241, p. 332,—
“How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio?
I know he will be glad of our success;
We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.”
The heraldry of Imaginative Devices in its very nature offers a wide field where the fancy may disport itself. Here things the most incongruous may meet, and the very contrariety only justify their being placed side by side.
Let us begin with the device, as given in the “Tetrastichi Morali,” p. 56, edition Lyons, 1561, by Giovio and Symeoni, used between 1498 and 1515; it is the device
to the motto, “Hand to hand and afar off”—
Cominus & eminus.
Di lontano & da preſſo il Re Luigi,
Feri’l nimico, & lo riduſſe à tale,
Che dall’ Indico al lito Occidentale
Di ſua virtù ſi veggiono i veſtigi.
A Porcupine is the badge, and the stanza declares,—
“From far and from near the King Louis,
Smites the enemy and so reduces him,
That from the Indian to the Western shore,
Of his valour the traces are seen.”
Camerarius with the same motto and the like device testifies that this was the badge of Louis XI., king of France, to whose praise he also devotes a stanza,—
“Cominus ut pugnat jaculis, atq. eminus histrix,
Rex bonus esto armis consiliisque potens.”
i.e.
“As close at hand and far off the porcupine fights with its spines,
Let a good king be powerful in arms and in counsels.”
It was this Louis who laid claim to Milan, and carried Ludovic Sforza prisoner to France. He defeated the Genoese after their revolt, and by great personal bravery gained the victory of Agnadel over the Venetians in 1509. At the same time he made war on Spain, England, Rome, and Switzerland, and was in very deed the porcupine darting quills on every side.
The well known application in Hamlet (act. i. sc. 5, l. 13, vol. viii. p. 35) of the chief characteristic of this vexing creature is part of the declaration which the Ghost makes to the Prince of Denmark,—
“But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.”
And of “John Cade of Ashford,” in 2 Henry VI. (act. iii. sc. 1, l. 360, vol. v. p. 162), the Duke of York avers,—
“In Ireland I have seen this stubborn Cade
Oppose himself against a troop of kernes;
And fought so long, ’till that his thighs with darts
Were almost like a sharp-quill’d porcupine.”
From the same source, Giovio’s and Symeoni’s “Sententiose Imprese,” Lyons, 1561, p. 115, we also derive the cognizance,—
To this Ostrich, with a large iron nail in its mouth, and with a scroll inscribed, “Courage digests the hardest things,” the stanza is devoted which means,—
“Devour does the ostrich with eager greediness
The iron, and then very easily digests it,
So (as the good Romano represents)
Time causes every injury to be digested.”
Camerarius, to the same motto, Ex Volatilibus (ed. 1595, p. 19), treats us to a similar couplet,—
“Magno animo fortis perferre pericula suevit,
Vllo nec facile frangitur ille metu.”
i.e.
“With mighty mind the brave grows accustomed to bear dangers,
Nor easily is that man broken by any fear.”
Shakespeare’s description of the ostrich, as given by Jack Cade, 2 Henry VI. (act iv. sc. 10, l. 23, vol. v. p. 206), is in close agreement with the ostrich device,—
“Here’s the lord of the soil,” he says, “come to seize me for a stray, for entering his fee-simple without leave. Ah, villain, thou wilt betray me, and get a thousand crowns of the king for carrying my head to him; but I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part.”
Note the iron pin in the ostrich’s mouth.
Sola facta ſolum Deum ſequor.
“My Lady Bona of Savoy,” as Paradin (ed. 1562, fol. 165) names her, “the mother of Ian Galeaz, Duke of Milan, finding herself a widow, made a device on her small coins of a Phœnix in the midst of a fire, with these words, ‘Being made lonely, I follow God alone.’ Wishing to signify that, as there is in the world but one Phœnix, even so being left by herself, she wished only to love conformably to the only God, in order to live eternally.”[125]
The “Tetrastichi Morali” presents the same Emblem, as indeed do Giovio’s “Dialogo dell’ Imprese,” &c., ed. Lyons, 1574, and “Dialogve des Devises,” &c., ed. Lyons, 1561;
with the same motto, and the invariable Italian Quatrain,—
Sola facta solũ
Deũ sequor.
Perduto ch’ hebbe il fido ſuo conſorte
La nobil Donna, qual Fenice ſola,
A Dio volſe ogni priego, ogni parola,
Dando vita al penſier con l’ altrui morte.
In English,—
“Lost had she her faithful consort,
The noble Lady, as a Phœnix lonely,
To God wills every prayer, every word
Giving life to consider death with others.”
The full description and characteristics of the Phœnix we reserve for the section which treats of Emblems for Poetic Ideas; but the loneliness, or if I may use the term, the oneliness of this fabulous bird Shakespeare occasionally dwells upon.
In the Cymbeline (act i. sc. 6, l. 12, vol. ix. p. 183), Posthumus and Iachimo had made a wager as to the superior qualities and beauties of their respective ladies, and Iachimo takes from Leonatus an introduction to Imogen; the Dialogue thus proceeds,—
“Iach. The worthy Leonatus is in safety,
And greets your highness dearly. [Presents a letter.
Imo. Thanks, good sir:
You're kindly welcome.
Iach. [Aside.] All of her that is out of door most rich!
If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare,
She is alone the Arabian bird, and I
Have lost the wager.”
Rosalind, in As You Like It (act iv. sc. 3, l. 15, vol. ii. p. 442), thus speaks of the letter which Phebe, the shepherdess, had sent her,—
“She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as phœnix.”
The oneliness of the bird is, too, well set forth in the Tempest (act iii. sc. 3, l. 22, vol. i. p. 50),—
“In Arabia
There is one tree, the phœnix' throne; one phœnix
At this hour reigning there.”
To the Heraldry of Imaginative Devices might be referred the greater part of the coats of arms, badges and cognizances by which noble and gentle families are distinguished. To conclude this branch of our subject, I will name a woodcut which was probably peculiar to Geffrey Whitney at the time when Shakespeare wrote, though accessible to the dramatist from other sources; it is the fine frontispiece to the Choice of Emblemes, setting forth the heraldic honours and arms of Robert, Earl of Leycester, and in part of his brother, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick. Each of these noblemen bore the same crest, and it was, what Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. (act v. sc. 1, l. 203, vol. v. p. 215), terms “the rampant bear chained to the ragged staff.”
How long this had been the cognizance of the Earls of Warwick, and whether it was borne by all the various families of the Saxon and Norman races who held the title,—by the Beauchamps, the Nevilles, and the Dudleys, admits of doubt; but it is certain that such was the cognizance in the reign of Henry VI. and in that of Elizabeth.
According to Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire, edition 1730, p. 398, the monument of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in Edward III.’s time, has a lion, not a bear; and a lamb for his Countess, the Lady Katherine Mortimer. Also on the monument of another Earl (p. 404), who died in 1401, the bear does not appear; but on the monument of Richard Beauchamp, who died “the last day of Aprill, the year of our lord god 1434,” the inscriptions are crowded with bears, instead of commas and colons; and the recumbent figure of the Earl has a muzzled bear at his feet (p. 410). The Nevilles now succeeded to the title, and a limner’s or designer’s very curious bill, of the fifteenth year of Henry VI., 1438, shows that the bear and ragged staff were then both in use and in honour,—
“First CCCC Pencels bete with the Raggidde staffe of silver
pris the pece v d. 08l. 06s. 00
Item for a grete Stremour for the Ship of XI yerdis length and
IIII yerdis in brede, with a grete Bere and Gryfon holding
a Raggid staffe, poudrid full of raggid staves; and for a
grate Crosse of S. George for the lymmynge and portraying 01. 06. 08
Item XVIII Standardes of worsted, entretailled with the
Bere and a Chayne, pris the pece xii d. 00. 18. 00”
Among the monuments in the Lady Chapel at Warwick is a full length figure of “Ambrose Duddeley,” who died in 1589, and of a muzzled bear crouching at his feet. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, his brother, died in 1588; and on his magnificent tomb, in the same chapel, is seen the same cognizance of the bear and ragged staff. The armorial bearings, however, are a little different from those which Whitney figures.
If, according to the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare’s works, 1863–1866, vol. v. p. vii., “the play upon which the Second part of Henry the Sixth was founded was first printed in quarto, in 1594;” or if, as some with as much reason have supposed,[126] it existed even previous to 1591, it is not likely that these monuments of elaborate design and costly and skilled workmanship could have been completed, so that from them Shakespeare had taken his description of “old Nevil’s crest.” Nathan Drake’s Shakspeare and his Times (vol. i. pp. 410, 416) tells us that he left Stratford for London “about the year 1586, or 1587;” yet “the family residence of Shakspeare was always at Stratford: that he himself originally went alone to London, and that he spent the greater part of every year there alone, annually, however, and probably for some months, returning to the bosom of his family, and that this alternation continued until he finally left the capital.”
Of course, had the monuments in question existed before the composition of the Henry VI., his annual visits to his native Warwickshire would have made them known to him, and he would thus have noted the family cognizance of the brother Earls; but reason favours the conjecture that these monuments in the Lady Chapel were not the sources of his knowledge.
Common rumour, indeed, may have supplied the information; but as Geffrey Whitney’s book appeared in 1586, its first novelty would be around it about the time at which Shakespeare was engaged in producing his Henry VI. That Emblem-book was dedicated to “Robert Earle of Leycester;” and, as we have said, contains a drawing, remarkably graphic, of a bear grasping a ragged staff, having a collar and chain around him, and standing erect on the helmet’s burgonet. There is also a less elaborate sketch of the same badge on the title-page to the second part of Whitney’s Emblemes, p. 105.
Most exactly, most artistically, does the dramatist ascribe the same crest, in the same attitude, and in the same standing place, to Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick, the king-setter-up and putter-down of History. In the fields between Dartford and Blackheath, in Kent, the two armies of Lancaster and York are encamped; in the Dialogue, there is almost a direct challenge from Lord Clifford to Warwick to meet upon the battle-field. York is charged as a traitor by Clifford (2 Henry VI., act v. sc. 1, l. 143, vol. v. p. 213), but replies,—
“I am the king, and thou a false-heart traitor.
Call hither to the stake my two brave bears,
That with the very shaking of their chains
They may astonish these fell-lurking curs:
Bid Salisbury and Warwick come to me.
Enter the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury.
Clif. Are these thy bears? we’ll bait thy bears to death,
And manacle the bear-ward in their chains,
If thou darest bring them to the baiting place.
Rich. Oft have I seen a hot o’erweening cur
Run back and bite, because he was withheld;
Who, being suffer’d with the bear’s fell paw,
Hath clapp’d his tail between his legs and cried:
And such a piece of service will you do,
If you oppose yourselves to match Lord Warwick.”
The Dialogue continues until just afterwards Warwick makes this taunting remark to Clifford (l. 196),—
“War. You were best to go to bed and dream again,
To keep thee from the tempest of the field.
Clif. I am resolved to bear a greater storm
Than any thou canst conjure up to-day;
And that I’ll write upon thy burgonet,
Might I but know thee by thy household badge.
War. Now, by my father’s badge, old Nevil’s crest,
The rampant bear chain’d to the ragged staff,
This day I’ll wear aloft my burgonet,
As on a mountain top the cedar shows
That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm,
Even to affright thee with the view thereof.
Clif. And from thy burgonet I’ll rend thy bear
And tread it underfoot with all contempt,
Despite the bear-ward that protects the bear.”
A closer correspondence between a picture and a description of it cannot be desired; Shakespeare’s lines and Whitney’s frontispiece exactly coincide;
“Like coats in heraldry
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.”
By Euclid’s axiom, “magnitudes which coincide are equal;” and though the reasonings in geometry and those in heraldry are by no means of forces identical, it may be a just conclusion; therefore, the coincidences and parallelisms of Shakespeare, with respect to Heraldic Emblems, have their original lines and sources in such writers as Giovio, Paradin, and Whitney. It was not he who set up the ancient fortifications, but he has drawn circumvallations around them, and his towers nod over against theirs, though with no hostile rivalry.