Section VI Emblems from Facts in Nature, and from the Properties of Animals.
EMBLEM writers make the Natural, one of the divisions of their subject, and understand by it, in Whitney’s words, the expressing of the natures of creatures, for example, “the loue of the yonge Storkes to the oulde, or of such like.” We shall extend a little the application of the term, taking in some facts of nature, as well as the natural properties and qualities of animals, but reserving in a great degree the Poetry, with which certain natural things are invested, for the next general heading, “Emblems for Poetic Ideas.”
There is no need to reproduce the Device of Prometheus bound, but simply to refer to it, and to note the allusions which Shakespeare makes to the mountain where the dire penalty was inflicted, “the frosty Caucasus.” From the Titus Andronicus we have already (p. 268) spoken of Tamora’s infatuated love,—
“faster bound to Aaron’s charming eyes
Than is Prometheus ty’d on Caucasus.”
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, endeavours, in Richard II. (act i. sc. 3, lines 275, 294, vol. iv. pp. 130, 131), to reconcile his son Henry Bolingbroke to the banishment which was decreed against him, and urges,—
“All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the king did banish thee,
But thou the king.”
Bolingbroke,however, replies,—
“O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”
The indestructibility of adamant by force or fire had for ages been a received truth.
“Whom no dangers terrify,” is a fitting motto for the Emblem that pertains to such as fear nor force nor fire.
Speaking of the precious gem that figures forth their character, it is the remark of Lebeus-Batillius (Emb. 29), “Duritia ineharrabilis est, simulque ignium victrix naturâ & nunquam incalescens,”—for which we obtain a good English expression from Holland’s Pliny (bk. xxxvii. c. 4): “Wonderfull and inenarrable is the hardnesse of a diamant; besides it hath a nature to conquer the fury of fire, nay, you shall never make it hote.”
The Latin stanzas in illustration close with the lines,—
“Qualis, non Adamas ullo contunditur ictu,
Vique sua ferri duritium superat.”
i.e.
“As by no blow the Adamant is crushed,
And by its own force overcomes the hardness of iron.”
When the great Talbot was released from imprisonment (1 Henry VI., act i. sc. 4, l. 49, vol. v. p. 20), his companions-in-arms on welcoming him back, inquired, “How wert thou entertained?” (l. 39)—
“With scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts.
........
In iron walls they deem’d me not secure;
So great fear of my name ’mongst them was spread
That they supposed I could rend bars of steel
And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.”
The strong natural affection of the bear for its young obtained record nearly three thousand years ago (2 Samuel xvii. 8),—“mighty men, chafed in their minds” are spoken of “as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field.”[153] Emblems delineated by Boissard and engraved by Theodore De Bry in 1596, at Emb. 43 present the bear licking her whelp, in sign that the inborn force of nature is to be brought into form and comeliness by instruction and good learning. At a little later period, the “Tronvs Cvpidinis,” or “Emblemata Amatoria” (fol. 2), so beautifully adorned by Crispin de Passe, adopts the sentiment, Perpolit incultum paulatim tempus amorem,—that “by degrees time puts the finish, or perfectness to uncultivated love.” The device by which this is shown introduces a Cupid as well as the bear and her young one,—
and is accompanied by Latin and French stanzas,—
“Vrsa novum fertur lambendo fingere fœtum
Paulatim & formam, quæ decet, ore dare;
Sic dominam, vt valde sic cruda sit aspera Amator
Blanditiis sensim mollet & obsequio.”
Peu à peu.
“Ceste masse de chair, que toute ourse faonne
En la leschant se forme à son commencement.
Par seruir: par flatter, par complaire en aymant,
L’amour rude à l’abord, à la fin se façonne.”
The sentiment of these lines finds a parallel in the Midsummer Night’s Dream (act i. sc. 1. l. 232, vol. ii. p. 206),—
“Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.”
Perchance, too, it receives illustration from the praise accorded to the young Dumain by Katharine, in Love’s Labour’s Lost (act ii. sc. 1, l. 56, vol. ii. p. 114),—
“A well accomplish’d youth,
Of all that virtue love for virtue loved:
Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill;
For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,
And shape to win grace, though he had no wit.”
To the denial of natural affection towards himself Gloucester (3 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2, l. 153, vol. v. p. 284) deemed it almost a thing impossible for him to “make his heaven in a lady’s lap,”—
“Why, love forswore me in my mother’s womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither’d shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part.
Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp
That carries no impression like the dam.”
Curious it is to note how slowly the continent which Columbus discovered became fully recognised as an integral portion of what had been denominated, ἡ οἰκουμένη,—“the inhabited world.” The rotundity of the earth and of the water was acknowledged, but Brucioli’s “Trattato della Sphera,” published at Venice, D.M.XLIII., maintains that the earth is immovable and the centre of the universe; and in dividing the globe into climates, it does not take a single instance except from what is named the old world; in fact, the new world of America is never mentioned.
Somewhat later, in 1564, when Sambucus published his Emblems, and presented Symbols of the parts of the Inhabited Earth, he gave only three; thus (p. 113),—
The Bull is thus set forth as the alumnus, or nursling of Europe; of Africa the Chimæra is the ensign; and to Asia belong the untamed Bear and Boar; America and the broad Pacific, from Peru to China, have neither token nor locality assigned.
Shakespeare’s geography, however, though at times very defective, extended further than its “symbols” by Sambucus. In the humorous mapping out, by Dromio of Syracuse, of the features of the kitchen-wench, who was determined to be his wife (Comedy of Errors, act iii. sc. 2, l. 131, vol. i. p. 429), the question is asked,—
“Ant. S. Where America, the Indies?
Dro. S. Oh, sir, upon her nose, all o’er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain.
In Twelfth Night (act iii. sc. 2, l. 73, vol. iii. p. 271) Maria thus describes the love-demented steward,—
“He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies; you have not seen such a thing as ’tis.”
And in the Merry Wives of Windsor (act i. sc. 3, l. 64, vol. i. p. 177), Sir John Falstaff avers respecting Mistress Page and Mistress Ford,—
“I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both.”
Yet in agreement with the map of Sambucus, with the three capes prominent upon it, of Gibraltar Rock, the Cape of Good Hope, and that of Malacca, Shakespeare on other occasions ignores America and all its western neighbours. At the consultation by Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, about the division of the Roman Empire (Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. vii. p. 384), Antony, on the exit of Lepidus, remarks,—
“This is a slight unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands: is it fit,
The three-fold world divided, he should stand
One of the three to share it?”
And when the camp of Octavius is near Alexandria (Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 6, l. 5, vol. ix. p. 109), and orders are issued to take Antony alive, Cæsar declares,—
“The time of universal peace is near:
Prove this a prosperous day, the three-nook’d world
Shall bear the olive freely.”
The Signs of the Zodiac, or, rather, the figures of the animals of which the zodiac is composed, were well known in Shakespeare’s time from various sources; and though they are Emblems, and have given name to at least one book of Emblems that was published in 1618,[154]—almost within the limits to which our inquiries are confined,—some may doubt whether they strictly belong to Emblem writers. Frequently, however, are they referred to in the dramas of which we are speaking; and, therefore, it is not out of place to exhibit a representation of them. This we do from the frontispiece or title page of an old Italian astronomical work by Antonio Brucioli (see Plate XIII.), who was banished from Florence for his opposition to the Medici, and whose brothers, in 1532, were printers in Venice. It is not pretended that Shakespeare was acquainted with this title page, but it supplies an appropriate illustration of several astronomical phenomena to which he alludes.
The zodiac enters into the description of the advancing day in Titus Andronicus (act ii. sc. 1, l. 5, vol. vi. p. 450),—
“As when the golden sun salutes the morn,
And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,
Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach,
And overlooks the highest-peering hills;
So Tamora.
Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,
And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown.”
It also occupies a place in a homely comparison in Measure for Measure (act i. sc. 2, l. 158, vol. i. p. 303), to point out the duration of nineteen years, or the moon’s cycle,—
“This new governor
Awakes me all the enrolled penalties
Which have, like unscour’d armour, hung by the wall
So long, that nineteen zodiacs have gone round.
And none of them been worn; and for a name
Now puts the drowsy and neglected act
Freshly on me: ’tis surely for a name.”
The archery scene in Titus Andronicus (act iv. sc. 3, l. 52, vol. vi. p. 501) mentions several of the constellations and the figures by which they were known. The dialogue is between Titus and Marcus,—
“Tit. You are a good archer, Marcus;
[He gives them the arrows.
‘Ad Jovem,’ that’s for you: here, ‘Ad Apollinem:’
‘Ad Martem,’ that’s for myself:
Here, boy, to Pallas: here, to Mercury:
To Saturn, Caius, not to Saturnine;
You were as good to shoot against the wind.
To it, boy! Marcus, loose when I bid.
Of my word, I have written to effect;
There’s not a god left unsolicited.
Marc. Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court:
We will afflict the emperor in his pride.
Tit. Now, masters, draw, [They shoot.] O, well said, Lucius!
Good boy, in Virgo’s lap; give it Pallas.
Marc. My Lord, I aim a mile beyond the moon;
Your letter is with Jupiter by this.
Tit. Ha, ha!
Publius, Publius, what hast thou done?
See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus’ horns.
Marc. This was the sport, my lord: when Publius shot,
The Bull, being gall’d, gave Aries such a knock
That down fell both the Ram’s horns in the court.”
In allusion to the old medico-astrological idea that the different members of the human body were under the influence of their proper or peculiar constellations, the following dialogue occurs in the Twelfth Night (act i. sc. 3, l. 127, vol. iii. p. 231),—
“Sir And. Shall we not set about some revels?
Sir Toby. What shall we do else? were we not born under Taurus?
Sir And. Taurus! That’s sides and heart.
”Toby. No sir; it is legs and thighs. Let me see thee caper: ha!
higher: ha, ha! excellent!”
Falstaff, in the Merry Wives of Windsor (act ii. sc. 2, l. 5, vol. i. p. 190), vaunts of the good services which he had rendered to his companions: “I have grated upon my good friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow Nym: or else you had looked through the grate, like a geminy of baboons.”
In telling of the folly of waiting on Achilles (Troilus and Cressida, act ii. sc. 3, l. 189, vol. vi. p. 175), Ulysses declares,—
“That were to enlard his fat-already pride,
And add more coals to Cancer when he burns
With entertaining great Hyperion.”
The figure of the ninth of the zodiacal constellations, Sagittarius, is named in Troilus and Cressida (act v. sc. 5, l. 11, vol. vi. p. 253),—
“Polixenes is slain,
Amphimachus and Thaos deadly hurt;
Patroclus ta’en or slain; and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful sagittary
Appals our number.”
If it be demanded why we do not give a fuller account of these constellations, we may almost remark as the fool does in King Lear (act i. sc. 5, l. 33, vol. viii. p. 295)—“The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.
Lear. Because they are not eight?
Fool. Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.”
How soon the American bird, which we name a Turkey, was known in England, is in some degree a subject of conjecture. It has been supposed that its introduction into this country is to be ascribed to Sebastian Cabot, who died in 1557, and that the year 1528 is the exact time; but if so, it is strange that the bird in question should not have been called by some other name than that which indicates a European or an Asiatic origin. Coq d’Inde, or Poule d’Inde, Gallo d’India, or Gallina d’India, the French and Italian names, point out the direct American origin, as far as France and Italy are concerned; for we must remember that the term India, at the early period of Spanish discovery, was applied to the western world. But most probably the Turkey fleet brought the bird into England, by way of Cadiz and Lisbon, and hence the name; and hence also the reasonableness of supposing that its permanent introduction into this country was not so early as the time of Cabot. A general knowledge of the bird was at any rate spread abroad in Europe soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, for we find it figured in the Emblem-books; one of which, Freitag’s Mythologia Ethica, in 1579, p. 237, furnishes a most lively and exact representation to illustrate “the violated right of hospitality.”[155]
Shakespeare, no doubt, was familiarly acquainted with the figure and habits of the Turkey, and yet may have seized for description some of the expressive delineations and engravings which occur in the Emblem writers. Freitag’s turkey he characterises with much exactness, though the sentiment advanced is more consistent with the lines from Camerarius. In the Twelfth Night (act ii. sc. 5, lines 15, 27, vol. iii. p. 257), Malvolio, as his arch-tormenter Maria narrates the circumstance, “has been yonder i’ the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour;” he enters on the scene, and Sir Toby says to Fabian, “Here’s an overweening rogue!” to which the reply is made, “O peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advancing plumes!”
The same action is well hit off in showing the bearing of the “pragging knave, Pistol,” as Fluellen terms him (Henry V., act v. sc. 1, l. 13, vol. iv. p. 591),—
“Gow. Why here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
Flu. ’Tis no matter for his swellings, nor his turkey-cocks. God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!”
Referring again to the “Prometheus ty’d on Caucasus,” the Vulture may be accepted as the Emblem of cruel retribution. So when Falstaff expresses his satisfaction at the death of Henry IV. (2nd part, act v. sc. 3, l. 134, vol. iv. p. 474), “Blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief-justice;” Pistol adds,—
“Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!”
And Lear, telling of the ingratitude of one of his daughters (King Lear, act ii. sc. 4, l. 129. vol. viii. p. 320). says,—
“Beloved Regan,
Thy sister’s naught: O Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here.”
A remarkable instance of similarity between Whitney and Shakespeare occurs in the descriptions which they both give of the Commonwealth of Bees. Whitney, it may be, borrowed his device (p. 200) from the “Hieroglyphica” of Horus Apollo (edition 1551, p. 87), where the question is asked, Πῶς λαὸν πειθήνιον βασιλεῖ;—
“How to represent a people obedient to their king? They depict a BEE, for of all animals bees alone have a king, whom the crowd of bees follow, and to whom as to a king they yield obedience. It is intimated also, as well from the remarkable usefulness of honey as from the force which the animal has in its sting, that a king is both useful and powerful for carrying on their affairs.”
It is worthy of remark that several, if not all, of the Greek and Roman authors name the head of a hive not a queen but a king. Plato, in his Politics (Francfort edition, 1602, p. 557A). writes,—
“Νὺν δὲ γε ὃτε οὐκ ἔστι γιγνόμενος, ὡς δὴ φαμὲν, ἔν ταῖς πόλεσι βασιλεὺς, οἱ~υς ἐν σμήνεσιν, εμφυέται, τό,τε σῶμα εὐθὺς καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν διαφέρων,” κ. τ. λ.
“There is not born, as we say, in cities a king such as is naturally produced in hives, decidedly differing both in body and soul.”
Xenophon’s Cyropædia (bk. v. c. 1, § 23) declares of his hero,—
“Βασιλεὺς μὲν γὰρ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖς σὺ φυσεί πεφυκέναι, οὐδὲν ἤττον η ἐν τῳ σμῆνει φυόμενος τῶν μελιττῶν ἡγεμών.”
“Thou seemest to me to have been formed a king by nature, no less than he who in the hive is formed general of the bees.”
In his Georgics Virgil always considers the chief bee to be a king, as iv. 75,—
“Et circa regem atque ipsa ad prætoria densæ
Miscentur, magnisque vocant clamoribus hostem.”[156]
“And thick around the king, and before the royal tent
They crowd, and with mighty din call forth the foe.”
Alciat’s 148th Emblem (edition 1581, p. 528, or edition 1551, p. 161) sets forth the clemency of a prince; but the description relates to wasps, not bees,—
Whitney’s stanzas (p. 200), dedicated to “Richard Cotton, Esquier,” of Combermere, Cheshire, are original writing, not a translation.
We will take the chief part of them; the motto being, “To every one his native land is dear.”
“The bees at lengthe retourne into their hiue,
When they haue suck’d the sweete of Floras bloomes;
And with one minde their worke they doe contriue,
And laden come with honie to their roomes:
A worke of arte; and yet no arte of man,
Can worke, this worke; these little creatures can.
The maister bee, within the midst dothe liue,
In fairest roome, and most of stature is;
And euerie one to him dothe reuerence giue,
And in the hiue with him doe liue in blisse:
Hee hath no stinge, yet none can doe him harme,
For with their strengthe, the rest about him swarme.
Lo, natures force within these creatures small,
Some, all the daye the honie home doe beare.
And some, farre off on flowers freshe doe fall,
Yet all at nighte vnto their home repaire:
And euerie one, her proper hiue doth knowe
Althoughe there stande a thousande on a rowe.
A Common-wealthe, by this, is right expreste:
Bothe him, that rules, and those, that doe obaye:
Or suche, as are the heads aboue the rest,
Whome here, the Lorde in highe estate dothe staye:
By whose supporte, the meaner sorte doe liue,
And vnto them all reuerence dulie giue.
Which when I waied: I call’d vnto my minde
Your Cvmbermaire, that fame so farre commendes:
A stately seate, whose like is harde to finde,
Where mightie Iove the horne of plentie lendes:
With fishe, and foule, and cattaile sondrie flockes,
Where christall springes doe gushe out of the rockes.
There, fertile fieldes; there, meadowes large extende:
There, store of grayne: with water, and with wood.
And, in this place, your goulden time you spende,
Vnto your praise, and to your countries good:
This is the hiue; your tennaunts, are the bees:
And in the same, haue places by degrees.”
By the side of these stanzas let us place for comparison what Shakespeare wrote on the same subject,—the Commonwealth of Bees,—and I am persuaded we shall perceive much similarity of thought, if not of expression. In Henry V. (act i. sc. 2, l. 178, vol. iv. p. 502), the Duke of Exeter and the Archbishop of Canterbury enter upon an argument respecting a well-governed state,—
“Exe. While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,
The advised head defends itself at home;
For government, though high and low and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.
Cant. Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavour in continual motion:
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king[157] and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering o’er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone.”
Again, in the Troilus and Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 75, vol. vi. p. 144), Ulysses draws from the unsuitableness of a general, as he terms the ruling bee, over a hive, an explanation of the mischiefs from an incompetent commander,—
“Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,
But for these instances.
The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair.
What honey is expected?”
The Dramatist’s knowledge of bee-life appears also in the metaphor used by Warwick (2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2, l. 125, vol. v. p. 168),—
“The commons, like an angry hive of bees,
That want their leader, scatter up and down,
And care not who they sting in his revenge.”
In an earlier play, 2 Henry IV. (act iv. sc. 5, l. 75, vol. iv. p. 454), the comparison is taken from the bee-hive,—
“When, like the bee, culling from every flower
The virtuous sweets,
Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey,
We bring it to the hive; and like the bees,
Are murdered for our pains.”
In the foregoing extracts on the bee-king, the plea is inadmissible that Shakespeare and Whitney went to the same fountain; for neither of them follows Alciatus. The two accounts of the economy and policy of these “creatures small” are almost equally excellent, and present several points of resemblance, not to name them imitations by the more recent writer. Whitney speaks of the “Master bee,” Shakespeare of the king, or “emperor,”—both regarding the head of the hive not as a queen, but a “born king,” and holding forth the polity of the busy community as an admirable example of a well-ordered kingdom or government.
The conclusion of Whitney’s reflections on those “that suck the sweete of Flora’s bloomes,” conducts to another parallelism; and to show it we have only to follow out his idea of returning home after “absence manie a yeare,” “when happe some goulden honie bringes.” Here is the whole passage (p. 201),—
“And as the bees, that farre and neare doe straye,
And yet come home, when honie they haue founde:
So, thoughe some men doe linger longe awaye,
Yet loue they best their natiue countries grounde.
And from the same, the more they absent bee,
With more desire, they wishe the same to see.
Euen so my selfe; throughe absence manie a yeare,
A straunger meere, where I did spend my prime.
Nowe, parentes loue dothe hale mee by the eare,
And sayeth, come home, deferre no longer time:
Wherefore, when happe, some goulden honie bringes?
I will retorne, and rest my wearie winges.
Ouid. 1. Pont. 4.
Quid melius Roma? Scythico quid frigore peius?
Huc tamen ex illa barbarus vrbe fugit.”
The parallel is from All’s Well that Ends Well (act i. sc. 2, 1. 58, vol. iii. p. 119), when the King of France speaks the praise of Bertram’s father,—
“‘Let me not live,’ quoth he,
‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain; whose judgments are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions.’ This he wish’d:
I after him do after him wish too,
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolved from my hive,
To give some labourers room.”
The noble art and sport of Falconry were long the recreation, and, at times, the eager pursuit of men of high birth or position. Various notices, collected by Dr. Nathan Drake, in Shakespeare and his Times (vol. i. pp. 255–272), show that Falconry was—
“During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, the most prevalent and fashionable of all amusements;... it descended from the nobility to the gentry and wealthy yeomanry, and no man could then have the smallest pretension to the character of a gentleman who kept not a cast of hawks.”
From joining in this amusement, or from frequently witnessing it, Shakespeare gained his knowledge of the sport and of the technical terms employed in it. We do not even suppose that our pictorial illustration supplied him with suggestions, and we offer it merely to show that Emblem writers, as well as others, found in falconry the source of many a poetical expression.[158] The Italian we quote from, Giovio’s “Sententiose Imprese” (Lyons, 1562, p. 41), makes it a mark “of the true nobility;” but by adding, “So more important things give place,” implies that it was wrong to let mere amusement occupy the time for serious affairs.
Thus we interpret the motto and the stanza,—
“Many falcons the falconer carries so proud
Through every place he makes them pass free;
And says to men sorrowing and of low degree,
Noble is he, who with virtue’s endowed.”
Falconers form part of the retinue of the drama (2 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. v. p. 132), and the dialogue at St. Albans even illustrates the expression, “Nobil’ è quel, ch’ è di virtù dotato,”—
“Q. Marg. Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook,
I saw not better sport these seven years’ day:
Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high;
And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out.
K. Henry. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest!
To see how God in all his creatures works!
Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.
Suf. No marvel, an it like your majesty,
My lord protector’s hawks do tower so well;
They know their master likes to be aloft,
And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch.
Glo. My lord, ’tis but a base ignoble mind
That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.”
On many other occasions Shakespeare shows his familiarity with the whole art and mysteries of hawking. Thus Christophero Sly is asked (Taming of the Shrew, Introduction, sc. 2, l. 41, vol. iii. p. 10),—
“Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar
Above the morning lark.”
And Petruchio, after the supper scene, when he had thrown about the meat and beaten the servants, quietly congratulates himself on having “politicly began his reign” (act iv. sc. 1, l. 174, vol. iii. p. 67),—
“My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,
And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged;
For then she never looks upon her lure.
Another way I have to man my haggard,
To make her come and know her keeper’s call,
That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites
That bate and beat and will not be obedient.”
Touchstone, too, in As You Like It (act iii. sc. 3, 1. 67, vol. ii. p. 427), hooking several comparisons together, introduces hawking among them: “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock will be nibbling.”
Also in Macbeth (act ii. sc. 4, l. 10, vol. vii. p. 459), after “hours dreadful and things strange,” so “that darkness does the face of earth entomb, when living light should kiss it,” the Old Man declares,—
“’Tis unnatural.
Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last
A falcon towering in her pride of place
Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.”
To renew our youth, like the eagle’s, is an old scriptural expression (Psalms, ciii. 5); and various arc the legends and interpretations belonging to the phrase.[159] We must not wander among these,—but may mention one which is given by Joachim Camerarius, Ex Volatilibus (Emb. 34), for which he quotes Gesner as authority, how in the solar rays, hawks or falcons, throwing off their old feathers, are accustomed to set right their defects, and so to renew their youth.
The thought of the sun’s influence in renovating what is decayed is unintentionally advanced by the jealousy of Adriana in the Comedy of Errors (act ii. sc. 1, l. 97, vol. i. p. 411), when to her sister Luciana she blames her husband Antipholus of Ephesus,—
“What ruins are in me that can be found
By him not ruin’d? then is he the ground
Of my defeatures. My decayed fair
A sunny look of his would soon repair.”
In the Cymbeline (act i. sc. 1, l. 130, vol. ix. p. 167), Posthumus Leonatus, the husband of Imogen, is banished with great fierceness by her father, Cymbeline, King of Britain. A passage between daughter and father contains the same notion as that in the Emblem of Camerarius,—
“Imo. There cannot be a pinch in death
More sharp than this is.
Cym. O disloyal thing,
That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap’st
A year’s age on me!”
Nil penna, ſed vſus.
The action of the ostrich in spreading out its feathers and beating the wind while it runs, furnished a device for Paradin (fol. 23), which, with the motto, The feather nothing but the use, he employs against hypocrisy.
Whitney (p. 51) adopts motto, device, and meaning,—
“The Hippocrites, that make so great a showe,
Of Sanctitie, and of Religion sounde,
Are shaddowes meere, and with out substance goe,
And beinge tri’de, are but dissemblers founde.
Theise are compar’de, vnto the Ostriche faire,
Whoe spreades her winges, yet sealdome tries the aire.”
A different application is made in 1 Henry IV. (act iv. sc. 1, l. 97, vol. iv. p. 317), yet the figure of the bird with outstretching wings would readily supply the comparison employed by Vernon while speaking to Hotspur of “the nimbled-footed madcap Prince of Wales, and his comrades,”—
“All furnish’d, all in arms;
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed.”
It must, however, be conceded, according to Douce’s clear annotation (vol. i. p. 435), that “it is by no means certain that this bird (the ostrich) is meant in the present instance.” A line probably is lost from the passage, and if supplied would only the more clearly show that the falcon was intended,—“estrich,” in the old books of falconry, denoting that bird, or, rather, the goshawk. In this sense the word is used in Antony and Cleopatra (act iii. sc. 13, l. 195, vol. ix. p. 100),—
“To be furious
Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood
The dove will peck the estridge.”
Though a fabulous animal, the Unicorn has properties and qualities attributed to it which endear it to writers on Heraldry and on Emblems. These are well, it may with truth be said, finely set forth in Reusner’s Emblems (edition 1581, p. 60), where the creature is made the ensign for the motto, Faith undefiled victorious.
A volume of tales and wonders might be collected respecting the unicorn; for a sketch of these the article on the subject in the Penny Cyclopædia (vol. xxvi. p. 2) may be consulted. There are the particulars given which Reusner mentions, and the medical virtues of the horn extolled,[161] which, at one time, it is said, made it so estimated that it was worth ten times its weight in gold. It is remarkable that Shakespeare, disposed as he was, occasionally at least, to magnify nature’s marvels, does not dwell on the properties of the unicorn, but rather discredits its existence; for when the strange shapes which Prospero conjures up to serve the banquet for Alonso make their appearance (Tempest, act iii. sc. 3, l. 21, vol. i. p. 50), Sebastian avers,—
“Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phœnix’ throne; one phœnix
At this hour reigning there.”
Timon of Athens (act iv. sc. 3, 1. 331, vol. vii. p. 281) just hints at the animal’s disposition: “Wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury.”
Decius Brutus, in Julius Cæsar (act ii. sc. 1, l. 203, vol. vii. p. 347), vaunts of his power to influence Cæsar, and among other things names the unicorn as a wonder to bring him to the Capitol. The conspirators doubt whether Cæsar will come forth;—
“Never fear that: if he be so resolved,
I can o’ersway him; for he loves to hear
That unicorns may be betray’d with trees,
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers.”
The humorous ballad in the Percy Reliques (vol. iv. p. 198), written it is supposed close upon Shakespeare’s times, declares,—
“Old stories tell, how Hercules
A dragon slew at Lerna,
With seven heads and fourteen eyes
To see and well discern-a:
But he had a club, this dragon to drub,
Or he had ne’er done it. I warrant ye.”
It is curious that the device in Corrozet’s Hecatomgraphie of the Dragon of Lerna should figure forth, in the multiplication of processes or forms, what Hamlet terms “the law’s delay.”
That is the very subject against which even Hercules,—“qu’ aqerre honneur par ses nobles conquestes,”—is called into requisition to rid men of the nuisance. We need not quote in full so familiar a narrative, and which Corrozet embellishes with twenty-four lines of French verses,—but content ourselves with a free rendering of his quatrain,—
“All clever though a man may be in various tricks of law,
Though he may think unto the end, his suit contains no flaw,
Yet up there spring forms three or four with which he hardly copes,
And lawyers’ talk and lawyers’ fees dash down his fondest hopes.”
It is not, however, with such speciality that Shakespeare uses this tale respecting Hercules and the Hydra. On the occasion serving, the questions may be asked, as in Hamlet (act v. sc. 1, l. 93, vol. viii. p. 154), “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?”
But simply by way of allusion the Hydra is introduced; as in the account of the battle of Shrewsbury (1 Henry IV. act v. sc. 4, l. 25, vol. iv. p. 342), Douglas had been fighting with one whom he thought the king, and comes upon “another king:” “they grow,” he declares, “like Hydra’s heads.”
In Othello (act ii. sc. 3, l. 290, vol. vii. p. 498), some time after the general had said to him (l. 238),—
“Cassio, I love thee;
But never more be officer of mine,”—
Cassio says to Iago,—
“I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard!
Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all.”
So of the change which suddenly came over the Prince of Wales (Henry V., act i. sc. 1, l. 35, vol. iv. p. 493), on his father’s death, it is said,—
“Never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat and all at once
As in this king.”
This section of our subject is sufficiently ample, or we might press into our service a passage from Timon of Athens (act iv. sc. 3, l. 317, vol. vii. p. 281), in which the question is asked, “What wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power?” and the answer is, “Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.”
In the wide range of the pre-Shakespearean Emblematists and Fabulists we might peradventure find a parallel to each animal that is named (l. 324),—
“If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee: if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner[162]... wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion, and thy defence absence.”
And so may we take warning, and make our defence for writing so much,—it is the absence of far more that might be gathered,—
“Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’
Like the poor cat i’ the adage.”
Macbeth, act i. sc. 7, l. 44.