Chapter IV The Knowledge of Emblem-Books in Britain, and General Indications That Shakespeare Was Acquainted with Them.
MONUMENTS, or memorial stones, with emblematical figures and characters carved upon them, are of ancient date in Britain as elsewhere—probably antecedent even to Christianity itself. Manuscripts, too, ornamented with many a symbolical device, carry us back several hundred years. These we may dismiss from consideration at the present moment, and simply take up printed books devoted chiefly or entirely to Emblems.
I.—Of printed Emblem-books in the earlier time down to 1598, when Willet’s Century of Sacred Emblems appeared, though there were several in the English language, there were only few of pure English origin. Watson and Barclay, in 1509, gave English versions of Sebastian Brant’s Fool-freighted Ship. Not later than 1536, nor earlier than 1517, The Dialogue of Creatures moralysed was translated “out of latyn in to our English tonge.” In 1549, at Lyons, The Images of the Old Testament, &c., were “set forthe in Ynglishe and Frenche;” and in 1553, from the same city, Peter Derendel gave in English metre The true and lyvely historyke Portreatures of the woll Bible.
The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, sometyme Lorde Chauncellour of England, were published in small folio, London, 1557, and in them at the beginning (signature C ijv—C iiij) are inserted what the author names “nyne pageauntes,” which, as they existed in his father’s house about A.D. 1496, were certainly Emblems. To this list Sir Thomas North, in London, 1570, added The Morall Philosophie of Doni, “out of Italien;” Daniell, in 1585, The worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius, which Whitney, in 1586, followed up by A Choice of Emblemes, “Englished and moralized;” and Paradin’s Heroicall Devises were “Translated out of Latin into English,” London, 1591.
To vindicate something of an English origin for a few emblems at least, reference may again be made to the fact that about the year 1495 or 6, “Mayster Thomas More in his youth deuysed in hys fathers house in London, a goodly hangyng of fyne paynted clothe, with nyne pageauntes,[73] and verses ouer of euery of those pageauntes: which verses expressed and declared, what the ymages in those pageauntes represented: and also in those pageauntes were paynted, the thynges that the verses ouer them dyd (in effecte) declare.” In 1592, Wyrley published at London The true use of Armories, &c.; soon after appeared Emblems by Thomas Combe, which, however, are no longer known to be in existence; and then, in 1598, Andrew Willet’s Sacrorvm Emblematvm Centvria vna, &c.,—“A Century of Sacred Emblems.” Guillim, in 1611, supplied A Display of Heraldry; and Peacham, in 1612, A Garden of Heroical Devices. There were, too, in MSS., several Emblem-works in English, some of which have since been edited and made known.
Yet we must not suppose that the knowledge of Emblem-books in Britain depended on those only of which an English version had been achieved. To men of culture, the whole series was open in almost its entire extent. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, had resided in France, and in 1555, being high in the favour of Henry II., “was made captain of his Scotch life-guards.” A few years before, namely, in 1549, as we have mentioned, p. 108, Aneau’s French translation of Alciat’s Emblems had been dedicated to him as, “filz de tres noble Prince Jacque Due de Chastel le herault, Prince Gouverneur du Royaume d’Escoce.”
Among the rare books in the British Museum is Marquale’s Italian Version of Alciat’s Emblems, printed at Lyons in 1549; a copy of it, a very lovely book, in the original binding, bears on the back the royal crown, and at the foot the letters “E. VI. R.,”—Edwardus Sextus Rex; and, as he died in 1553, we thus have evidence at how early a date the work was known in England. To the young king it would doubtless be a book “for delight and for ornament.”
Of Holbein’s Imagines Mortis, Lyons, 1545, by George Æmylius, Luther’s brother-in-law, a copy now in the British Museum “was presented to Prince Edward by Dr. William Bill, accompanied with a Latin dedication, dated from Cambridge, 19th July, 1546, wherein he recommends the prince’s attention to the figures in the book, in order to remind him that all must die to obtain immortality; and enlarges on the necessity of living well. He concludes with a wish that the Lord will long and happily preserve his life, and that he may finally reign to all eternity with his most Christian father. Bill was appointed one of the king’s chaplains in ordinary, 1551, and was made the first Dean of Westminster in the reign of Elizabeth.”—Douce’s Holbein, Bohn’s ed., 1858, pp. 93, 94.
In 1548, Mary of Scotland was sent into France for her education (Rapin, ed. 1724, vol. vi. p. 30), and here imbibed the taste for, or rather knowledge of, Emblems, which afterwards she put into practice. To her son, in his fourteenth year, emblems were introduced by no less an authority than that of Theodore Beza. A copy indeed of the works of Alciatus was bound for him when he became King of England,—it is a folio edition, in six volumes or parts, and is still preserved in the British Museum; the royal arms are on the cover, front and back, and fleurs-de-lis in the corners. It was printed at Lyons in 1560, and possibly the Emblems in vol. vi., leaves 334–354, with their very beautiful devices, may have been the companions of his boyhood and early years. By the Emblem-works of Beza and of Alciat probably was laid the foundation of the king’s love for allegorical representations, which, under the name of masques, were provided by Jonson for the Court’s amusement. The king’s weakness in this respect is wittily set forth in the French epigram soon after his death (Rapin’s History, 4to, vol. vii. p. 259):—
“Tandis qu’ Elisabeth fut Roi,
L’Anglois fut d’Espagne l’effroi;
Maintenant, dévise & caquette,
Régi par la Reine Jaquette.”[74]
To English noblemen, in 1608, Otho van Veen, from Antwerp, commends his Amorum Emblemata,—“Emblems of the Loves,”—with 124 excellent devices. Thus the dedication runs: “To the moste honorable and woerthie brothers, William Earle of Pembroke, and Philip Earle of Mountgomerie, patrons of learning and cheualrie.” In England, therefore, as in Scotland, there were eminent lovers of the Emblem literature.
But an acquaintance with that literature may be regarded as more spread abroad and increased when Emblem-books became the sources of ornamentation for articles of household furniture, and for the embellishment of country mansions. A remarkable instance is supplied from The History of Scotland, edition London, 1655, “By William Drummond of Hauthornden.” It is in a letter “To his worthy Friend Master Benjamin Johnson,” dated July 1, 1619, respecting some needle-work by Mary Queen of Scots, and shows how intimately she was acquainted with several of the Emblem-books of her day, or had herself attained the art of making devices. The whole letter, except a few lines at the beginning, is most interesting to the admirers of Emblems. Drummond thus writes:—
“I have been curious to find out for you the Impresaes and Emblemes on a Bed of State[75] wrought and embroidered all with gold and silk by the late Queen Mary, mother to our sacred Sovereign, which will embellish greatly some pages of your Book, and is worthy your remembrance; the first is the Loadstone turning towards the pole, the word her Majesties name turned on an Anagram, Maria Stuart, sa virtu, m’attire, which is not much inferiour to Veritas armata. This hath reference to a Crucifix, before which with all her Royall Ornaments she is humbled on her knees most liuely, with the word, undique; an Impresa of Mary of Lorrain, her Mother, a Phœnix in flames, the word,[76] en ma fin git mon commencement. The Impressa of an Apple-Tree growing in a Thorn, the word, Per vincula crescit. The Impressa of Henry the second, the French King, a Cressant, the word, Donec totum impleat orbem. The Impressa of King Francis the first, a Salamander crowned in the midst of Flames, the word, Nutrisco et extinguo. The Impressa of Godfrey of Bullogne, an arrow passing through three birds, the word, Dederit ne viam Casusve Deusve. That of Mercurius charming Argos, with his hundred eyes, expressed by his Caduceus, two Flutes, and a Peacock, the word, Eloquium tot lumina clausit. Two Women upon the Wheels of Fortune, the one holding a Lance, the other a Cornucopia; which Impressa seemeth to glaunce at Queen Elizabeth and herself, the word, Fortunæ Comites. The Impressa of the Cardinal of Lorrain her Uncle, a Pyramid overgrown with ivy, the vulgar word, Te stante virebo; a Ship with her Mast broken and fallen in the Sea, the word, Nusquam nisi rectum. This is for herself and her Son, a Big Lyon and a young Whelp beside her, the word, Unum quidem, sed Leonem. An embleme of a Lyon taken in a Net, and Hares wantonly passing over him, the word, Et lepores devicto insultant Leone. Cammomel in a garden, the word, Fructus calcata dat amplos. A Palm Tree, the word, Ponderibus virtus innata resistit. A Bird in a Cage, and a Hawk flying above, with the word, Il mal me preme et me spaventa a Peggio. A triangle with a Sun in the middle of a Circle, the word, Trino non convenit orbis. A Porcupine amongst Sea Rocks, the word, Ne volutetur. The Impressa of king Henry the eight, a Portculles, the word, altera securitas. The Impressa of the Duke of Savoy, the annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the word, Fortitudo ejus Rhodum tenuit. He had kept the Isle of Rhodes. Flourishes of Armes, as Helms, Launces, Corslets, Pikes, Muskets, Canons, the word, Dabit Deus his quoque finem. A Tree planted in a Church-yard environed with dead men’s bones, the word, Pietas revocabit ab orco. Ecclipses of the Sun and the Moon, the word, Ipsa sibi lumen quod invidet aufert, glauncing, as may appear, at Queen Elizabeth. Brennus Ballances, a sword cast in to weigh Gold, the word, Quid nisi Victis dolor! A Vine tree watred with Wine, which instead to make it spring and grow, maketh it fade, the word, Mea sic mihi prosunt. A wheel rolled from a Mountain in the Sea, the word, Piena di dolor voda de Sperenza. Which appeareth to be her own, and it should be, Precipitio senza speranza. A heap of Wings and Feathers dispersed, the word, Magnatum Vicinitas. A Trophie upon a Tree, with Mytres, Crowns, Hats, Masks, Swords, Books, and a Woman with a Vail about her eyes or muffled, pointing to some about her, with this word, Ut casus dederit. Three crowns, two opposite and another above in the Sea, the word, Aliamque moratur. The Sun in an Ecclipse, the word, Medio occidet Die.”
“I omit the Arms of Scotland, England, and France severally by themselves, and all quartered in many places of this Bed. The workmanship is curiously done, and above all value, and truely it may be of this Piece said, Materiam superabat opus.”[77]
It would be tedious to verify, as might be done in nearly every instance, the original authors of these twenty-nine Impreses and Emblems. Several of them are in our own Whitney, several in Paradin’s Devises heroiques, and several in Dialogve des Devises d’armes et d’amovrs dv S. Pavlo Jovio, &c., 4to, A Lyon, 1561.
From the last named author we select as specimens two of the Emblems with which Queen Mary embellished the bed for her son;—the first is “the Impressa of King Francis the First,” who, as the Dialogue, p. 24, affirms, “changea la fierté des deuises de guerre en la douceur & ioyeuseté amoureuse,”—“And to signify that he was glowing with the passions of love,—and so pleasing were they to him, that he had the boldness to say that he found nourishment in them;—for this reason he chose the Salamander, which dwelling in the flames is not consumed.” (See woodcut next page.) The second, p. 25, is “the Impressa of Henry the second, the French King,” the son and successor of Francis in 1547. (See woodcut, p. 127.)
He had adopted the motto and device when he was Dauphin, and continued to bear them on his succession to the throne;—in the one case to signify that he could not show his entire worth until he arrived at the heritage of the kingdom; and in the other that he must recover for his kingdom what had been lost to it, and so complete its whole orb.
It may appear almost impossible, even on a “Bed of State,” to work twenty-nine Emblems and the arms of Scotland, England, and France, “severally by themselves and all quartered in many places of the bed,”—but a bed, probably of equal antiquity, was a few years since, if not now, existing at Hinckley in Leicestershire, on which the same number “of emblematical devices, and Latin mottoes in capital letters conspicuously introduced,” had found space and to spare. All these emblems are, I believe, taken from books of Shakespeare’s time, or before him; as, “An ostrich with a horseshoe in the beak,” the word, Spiritus durissima coquit; “a cross-bow at full stretch,” the word, Ingenio superat vires. “A hand playing with a serpent,” the word, Quis contra nos? “The tree of life springing from the cross on an altar,”[78] the word, Sola vivit in illo. (See Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. lxxxi. pt. 2, p. 416, Nov. 1811.)
Of the use of Emblematical devices in the ornamenting of houses, it will be sufficient to give the instance recorded in “The History and Antiquities of Hawsted and Hardwick, in the county of Suffolk, by the Rev. Sir John Cullum, Bart:” the 2nd edition, royal 4to, London, 1813, pp. 159–165. This History makes it evident that in the reign of James I., if not earlier, Emblems were so known and admired as to have been freely employed in adorning a closet for the last Lady Drury. “They mark the taste of an age that delighted in quaint wit, and laboured conceits of a thousand kinds,” says Sir John; nevertheless, there were forty-one of them in “the painted closet” at Hawsted, and which, at the time of his writing, were put up in a small apartment at Hardwick. To all of them, as for King James’s bed, and for the “very antient oak wooden bedstead, much gilt and ornamented,” at Hinckley, there were a Latin motto and a device. Some of them we now present to the reader, adding occasionally to our author’s account a further notice of the sources whence they were taken:
Emblem 1. Ut parta labuntur,—“As procured they are slipping away.” “A monkey, sitting in a window and scattering money into the streets, is among the emblems of Gabriel Simeon:” it is also in our own English Whitney, p. 169, with the word, Malè parta malè delabuntur,—“Badly gotten, badly scattered.”
Emblem 5. Quò tendis?—“Whither art thou going?” “A human tongue with bats’ wings, and a scaly contorted tail, mounting into the air,” “is among the Heroical Devises of Paradin:” leaf 65 of edition Anvers, 1562.
Emblem 8. Jam satis,—“Already enough.” “Some trees, leafless, and torn up by the roots; with a confused landscape. Above, the sun, and a rainbow;” a note adds, “the most faire and bountiful queen of France Katherine used the sign of the rainbow for her armes, which is an infallible sign of peaceable calmeness and tranquillitie.”—Paradin. Paradin’s words, ed. 1562, leaf 38, are “Madame Catherine, treschretienne Reine de France, a pour Deuise l’Arc celeste, ou Arc en ciel: qui est le vrai signe de clere serenité & tranquilité de Paix.”
Emblem 20. Dum transis, time,—“While thou art crossing, fear.” “A pilgrim traversing the earth: with a staff, and a light coloured hat, with a cockle shell in it.” In Hamlet, act iv. sc. 5, l. 23, vol. viii. p. 129,—
“How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.”
“Or,” remarks Sir John Cullum, “as he is described in Greene’s Never too Late, 1610;”—
“With Hat of straw, like to a swain,
Shelter for the sun and rain,
With scallop-shell before.”
Emblem 24. Fronte nulla fides,—“No trustworthiness on the brow.” The motto with a different device occurs in Whitney’s Emblems, p. 100, and was adopted by him from the Emblems of John Sambucus; edition Antwerp, 1564, p. 177. The device, however, in “the painted closet” was “a man taking the dimensions of his own forehead with a pair of compasses;” “a contradiction,” inaptly remarks Sir J. Cullum, “to a fancy of Aristotle’s that the shape and several other circumstances, relative to a man’s forehead, are expressive of his temper and inclination.”
Upon this supposition Symeon,[79] before mentioned, has invented an Emblem, representing a human head and a hand issuing out of a cloud, and pointing to it, with this motto, Frons hominem præfert,—“The forehead shows the man.”
Emblem 33. Speravi et perii,—“I hoped and perished;”—the device, “A bird thrusting its head into an oyster partly open.” A very similar sentiment is rather differently expressed by Whitney, p. 128, by Freitag, p. 169, and by Alciat, edition Paris, 1602, emb. 94, p. 437, from whom it was borrowed. Here the device is a mouse invading the domicile of an oyster, the motto, Captivus ob gulam,—“A prisoner through gluttony;” and the poor little mouse—
“That longe did feede on daintie crommes,
And safelie search’d the cupborde and the shelfe:
At lengthe for chaunge, vnto an Oyster commes,
Where of his deathe, he guiltie was him selfe:
The Oyster gap’d, the Mouse put in his head,
Where he was catch’d, and crush’d till he was dead.”
Now, since so many Emblems from various authors were gathered to adorn a royal bed,[80] “a very antient oak wooden bed,” and “a lady’s closet,” in widely distant parts of Britain, the supposition is most reasonable that the knowledge of them pervaded the cultivated and literary society of England and Scotland; and that Shakespeare, as a member of such society, would also be acquainted with them. The facts themselves are testimonies of a generally diffused judgment and taste, by which Emblematic devices for ornaments would be understood and appreciated.
And the facts we have mentioned are not solitary. About the period in question, in various mansions of the two kingdoms, Device and Emblem were employed for their adorning. In 1619, close upon Shakespeare’s time, and most likely influenced by his writings, there was set up in the Ancient Hall of the Leycesters of Lower Tabley, Cheshire, a richly carved and very curious chimney-piece, which may be briefly described as emblematizing country pursuits in connection with those of heraldry, literature, and the drama. In high relief, on one of the upright slabs, is a Lucrece, as the poet represents the deed, line 1723,—
“Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast
A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed.”
On the other slab is a Cleopatra, with the deadly creature in her hand, though not at the very moment when she addressed the asp;—act. v. sc. 2, l. 305, vol. ix. p. 151,—
“Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?”
The cross slab represents the hunting of stag and hare, which with the hounds have wonderfully human faces. Here might the words of Titus Andronicus, act. ii. sc. 2, l. 1, vol. vii. p. 456, be applied,—
“The hunt is up, the moon is bright and gray,
The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green;
Uncouple here, and let us make a bay,
And wake the emperor and his lovely bride,
And rouse the prince, and ring a hunter’s peal
That all the court may echo with the noise.”
The heraldic insignia of the Leycesters surmount the whole, but just below them, in a large medallion, is an undeniable Emblem, similar to one which in 1624 appeared in Hermann Hugo’s Pia Desideria, bk. i. emb. xv. p. 117; Defecit in dolore vita mea et anni mei in gemitibus (Psal. xxx. or rather Psal. xxxi. 10),—“My life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing.” Appended to Hugo’s device are seventy-six lines of Latin elegiac verses, and five pages of illustrative quotations from the Fathers; but the character of the Emblem will be seen from the device presented.
Drayton in his Barons’ Wars, bk. vi., published in 1598, shows how the knowledge of our subject had spread and was spreading; as when he says of certain ornaments,—
“About the border, in a curious fret,
Emblems, impressas, hieroglyphics set.”
There is, however, no occasion to pursue any further this branch of our theme, except it may be by a short continuation or extension of our Period of time, to show how Milton’s greater Epic most curiously corresponds with the title-page of a Dutch Emblem-book, which appeared in 1642, several years before Paradise Lost was written. (See Plate X.) The book is, Jan Vander Veens Zinne-beelden, oft Adams Appel,—“John Vander Veen’s Emblems, or Adam’s Apple,”—presenting some Dutch doggerel lines, of which this English doggerel contains the meaning,—
“When wounded Adam lay from the sin and the fall,
Out of the accursed wound flowed corruption and gall;
Hence is all wickedness and evil bred,
As here in print ye see the Devil fashioned.”
And again,—
“Out of Adam’s Apple springs
Misery, Sin, and deadly things.”
Singularly like to Milton’s Introduction (bk. i. lines 1–4),—
“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden.”
With equal singularity appears in Boissard’s Theatrum Vitæ Humanæ,—“Theatre of Human Life,”—edition Metz, 1596, p. 19, the coincidence with Milton’s Fall of the rebel Angels. We have here pictured and described the Fall of Satan (see Plate XI.) almost as in modern days Turner depicted it, and as Milton has narrated the terrible overthrow (Paradise Lost, bk. vi.), when they were pursued
“With terrors, and with furies, to the bounds
And crystal wall of heaven; which, opening wide,
Roll’d inward, and a spacious gap disclosed
Into the wasteful deep: the monstrous sight
Struck them with horror backward, but far worse
Urged them behind: headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of heaven....
Nine days they fell: confounded Chaos roar’d,
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall
Through his wild anarchy.”[81]
That same Theatre of Human Life, p. 1 (see Plate XIV.), also contains a most apt picture of Shakespeare’s lines, As You Like It, act. ii. sc. 7, l. 139, vol. ii. p. 409,—
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
The same notion is repeated in the Merchant of Venice, act. i. sc. 1, l. 77, vol. ii. p. 281, when Antonio says,—
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
In England, as elsewhere, emblematical carvings and writings preceded books of Emblems, that is, books in which the art of
the engraver and the genius of the poet were both employed to illustrate one and the same motto, sentiment, or proverbial saying. Not to repeat what may be found in Chaucer and others, Spenser’s Visions of Bellay,[82] alluded to in the fac-simile reprint of Whitney, pp. xvi & xvii, needed only the designer and engraver to make them as perfectly Emblem-books as were the publications of Brant, Alciatus and Perriere. Those visions portray in words what an artist might express by a picture. For example, in Moxon’s edition, 1845, p. 438, iv.,—
“I saw raisde vp on pillers of Iuorie,
Wereof the bases were of richest golde,
The chapters Alabaster, Christall frises,
The double front of a triumphall arke.
On eche side portraide was a Victorie,
With golden wings, in habite of a nymph
And set on hie vpon triumphing chaire;
The auncient glorie of the Romane lordes.
The worke did shew it selfe not wrought by man,
But rather made by his owne skilfull hands
That forgeth thunder dartes for Ioue his sire.
Let me no more see faire thing vnder heauen,
Sith I haue seene so faire a thing as this,
With sodaine falling broken all to dust.”
Now what artist’s skill would not suffice from this description to delineate “the pillers of Iuorie,” “the chapters of Alabaster,” “a Victorie with golden wings,” and “the triumphing chaire, the auncient glorie of the Romane lordes;” and to make the whole a lively and most cunning Emblem?
In his Shepheards Calender, indeed, to each of the months Spenser appends what he names an “Emblem;” it is a motto, or device, from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, or English, expressive of the supposed leading idea of each Eclogue, and forming a moral to it. The folio edition of Spenser’s works, issued in 1616, gives woodcuts for each month, and so approaches very closely to the Emblematists of a former century. In the month “FEBRVARIE,” there is introduced a veritable word-picture of “the Oake and the Brier,” and also a pictorial illustration, with the sign of the Fishes in the clouds, to indicate the season of the year. The oak is described as “broughten to miserie:” l. 213,—
“For nought mought they quitten him from decay,
For fiercely the goodman at him did laye.
The blocke oft groned under the blow,
And sighed to see his neere overthrow.
In fine, the steele had pierced his pith,
Tho downe to the earth hee fell forthwith.”
The Brier, “puffed up with pryde,” has his turn of adversity: l. 234,—
“That nowe upright hee can stand no more;
And, being downe, is trod in the durt
Of cattel, and brouzed, and sorely hurt.”
The whole Eclogue, or Fable, is rounded off by the curious Italian proverbs, to which Spenser gives the name of Emblems,—
Thenots Embleme.
“Iddio, perche é vecchio,
Fa suoi al suo essempio.”
Cuddies Embleme.
“Niuno vecchio
Spaventa Iddio.”
i.e., “God, although he is very aged, makes his friends copies of himself,” makes them aged too; but the biting satire is added. “No old man is ever terrified by Jove.”
The Emblem for June represents a scene which the poet does not describe; it is the field of the haymakers, with the zodiacal sign of the Crab, and appropriate to the characters of Hobbinoll and Colin Clout,— but it certainly does not translate into pictures what the poet had delineated in words of great beauty:
“Lo! Colin, here the place whose plesaunt syte
From other shades hath weaned my wandring minde,
Tell mee, what wants mee here to worke delyte?
The simple ayre, the gentle warbling winde,
So calme, so coole, as nowhere else I finde;
The grassie grounde with daintie daysies dight,
The bramble bush, where byrdes of every kinde
To the waters fall their tunes attemper right.”
No more needs be said respecting the knowledge of Emblem-books in Britain, unless it be to give the remarks of Tod, the learned editor of Spenser’s works, edition 1845, p. x. “The Visions are little things, done probably when Spenser was young, according to the taste of the times for Emblems.[83] The Theatre of Wordlings, I must add, evidently presents a series of Emblems.”
II. We will now state some of the general indications that Shakespeare was acquainted with Emblem-books, or at least had imbibed “the taste of the times.”
Here and there in Shakespeare’s works, even from the way in which sayings and mottoes, in Spanish, as well as in French and Latin, are employed, we have indications that he had seen and, it may be, had studied some of the Emblem-writers of his day, and participated of their spirit. Thus Falstaff’s friend, the ancient Pistol, 2 Henry IV. act. ii. sc. 4, l. 165, vol. iv. p. 405, quotes the doggerel line, as given in the note, Si fortuna me tormenta, il sperare me contenta,—“If fortune torments me, hope contents me,”—which doubtless was the motto on his sword, which he immediately lays down. As quoted, the line is Spanish; a slight alteration would make it Italian; but Douce’s conjecture appears well founded, that as Pistol was preparing to lay aside his sword, he read off the motto which was upon it. Such mottoes were common as inscriptions upon swords; and Douce, vol. i. pp. 452, 3, gives the drawing of one with the French line, “Si fortune me tourmente, L’esperance me contente.”
He gives it, too, as a fact, that “Haniball Gonsaga being in the low-countries overthrowne from his horse by an English captaine and commanded to yeeld himselfe prisoner, kist his sword, and gave it to the Englishman, saying, ‘Si fortuna me tormenta, il speranza me contenta.’” Allow that Shakespeare served in the Netherlands, and we may readily suppose that he had heard the motto from the very Englishman to whom Gonsaga had surrendered.
The Clown in Twelfth Night, act. i. sc. 5, l. 50, vol. iii. p. 234, replies to the Lady Olivia ordering him as a fool to be taken away,—“Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit monachum, [—it is not the hood that makes the monk,]—that’s as much to say as I wear not motley in my brain.” The saying is one which might appropriately adorn any Emblem-book of the day;—and the motley-wear receives a good illustration from a corresponding expression in Whitney, p. 81:
“The little childe, is pleas’de with cockhorse gaie,
Although he aske a courser of the beste:
The ideot likes, with bables for to plaie,
And is disgrac’de when he is brauelie dreste:
A motley coate, a cockescombe, or a bell,
Hee better likes, than Jewelles that excell.”
So, during Cade’s rebellion, when the phrase is applied by Lord Say, in answer to Dick the butcher’s question, “What say you of Kent?” 2 Henry VI. act. iv. sc. 7, l. 49, vol. v. p. 197,—
“Nothing but this: ’Tis bona terra, mala gens;”
or when falling under the attack of York on the field of St. Alban’s, Lord Clifford exclaims, La fin couronne les œuvres (2 Henry VI. act. v. sc. 2, l. 28, vol. v. p. 217); these again are instances after the methods of Emblem-writers; and if they were carried out, as might be done, would present all the characteristics of the Emblem, in motto, illustrative woodcut, and descriptive verses.
It is but an allusion, and yet the opening scene, act. i. sc. 1, l. 50, vol. ii. p. 280, of the Merchant of Venice might borrow that allusion from an expression of Alciatus, edition Antwerp, 1581, p. 92, Jane bifrons,—“two-headed Janus.” (See woodcut, p. 140.)
Iane bifrons, qui iam transacta futuraq̃ calles,
Quiq̃ retro sannas, sicut & ante, vides;—
“Janus two-fronted, who things past and future well knowest,
And who mockings behind, as also before dost behold.”[84]
The friends of Antonio banter him for his sadness, and one of them avers,—
“Now by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper;
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.”
Even if Shakespeare understood no Latin, the picture itself, or a similar one, would be sufficient to give origin to the phrase “two-headed Janus.” He adopts the picture, but not one of the sentiments; these, however, he did not need: it was only as a passing illustration that he named Janus, and how the author described the god’s qualities was no part of his purpose.
Or if the source of the phrase be not in Alciatus, it may have been derived either from Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes, p. 108, or from Perriere’s Theatre des Bons Engins, Paris, 1539, emb. i., reproduced in 1866 to illustrate pl. 30 of the fac-simile reprint of Whitney. Perriere’s French stanza is to this effect:—
“In old times the god Janus with two faces
Our ancients did delineate and portray,
To demonstrate that counsels of wise races
Look to a future, as well as the past day;
In fact all time of deeds should leave the traces,
And of the past recordance ever have;
The future should foresee like providence,
Following up virtue in each noble quality,
Seeking God’s strength from sinfulness to save.
Who thus shall do will learn by evidence
That he has power to live in great tranquillity.”[85]
Another instance of Emblem-like delineation, or description, we have in King Henry V. act iii. sc. 7, lines 10–17, vol. iv. p. 549. Louis the Dauphin, praising his own horse, as if bounding from the earth like a tennis ball (see woodcut on next page), exclaims,—
“I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ça, ha! he bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, chez les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.[86]
Orl. He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.
Dau. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness, while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts.
Con. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.
Dau. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.”
This lively description suits well the device of a Paris printer, Christian Wechel, who, in 1540,[87] dwelt “a l’enseigne du Cheval volant;” or that of Claude Marnius of Francfort, who, before 1602, had a similar trade-mark. At least three of Reusner’s Emblems, edition Francfort, 1581, have the same device; and the Dauphin’s paragon answers exactly to a Pegasus in the first Emblem, dedicated to Rudolph II., who, on the death of his father, Maximilian, became Emperor of Germany.
Here[88] we have a Pegasus like that which Shakespeare praises; it has a warrior on its back, and bounds along, trotting the air. In other two of Reusner’s Emblems, the Winged Horse is standing on the ground, with Perseus near him; and in a third, entitled Principis boni imago,—“Portrait of a good prince,”—St. George is represented on a flying steed[89] attacking the Dragon, and delivering from its fury the Maiden chained to a rock, that shadows forth a suffering and persecuted church. Shakespeare probably had seen these or similar drawings before he described Louis the Dauphin riding on a charger that had nostrils of fire.
The qualities of good horsemanship Shakespeare specially admired. Hence those lines in Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7, l. 84, vol. viii. p. 145,—
“I’ve seen myself, and served against, the French,
And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
Had witchcraft in’t; he grew unto his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast.”
An emblem in Alciatus, edition 1551, p. 20, also gives the mounted warrior on the winged horse;—it is Bellerophon in his contest with the Chimæra. The accompanying stanza has in it an expression like one which the dramatist uses,—
“Sic tu Pegaseis vectus petis æthera pennis,”—
“So thou being borne on the wings of Pegasus seekest the air.”
Equally tasting of the Emblem-writers of Henry’s and Elizabeth’s reigns is that other proverb in French which Shakespeare places in the mouth of the Dauphin Louis. The subject is still his “paragon of animals,” which he prefers even to his mistress. See Henry V. act iii. sc. 7, l. 54, vol iv. p. 550. “I had rather,” he says, “have my horse to my mistress;” and the Constable replies, “I had as lief have my mistress a jade.”
“Dau. I tell thee, constable, my mistress wears his own hair.
Con. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.
Dau. Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier. Thou makest use of anything.” [“The dog has returned to his vomit, and the sow that had been washed, to her mire.”]
Though the French is almost a literal rendering of the Latin Vulgate, 2 Pet. ii. 23, “Canis reversus ad suum vomitum: & sus lota in volutabro luti;” the whole conception is in the spirit of Freitag’s Mythologia Ethica, Antwerp, 1579, in which there is appended to each emblem a text of Scripture. A subject is chosen, a description of it given, an engraving placed on the opposite page, and at the foot some passage from the Latin vulgate is applied.
It may indeed be objected that, if Shakespeare was well acquainted with the Emblem literature it is surprising he should pass over, almost in silence, some Devices which partake peculiarly of his general spirit, and which would furnish suggestions for very forcible and very appropriate descriptions. Were we to examine his works thoroughly, we should discover some very remarkable omissions of subjects that appear to be exactly after his own method and perfectly natural to certain parts of his dramas. We may instance the almost total want of commendation for the moral qualities of the dog, whether “mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, hound or spaniel, brach or lym, or bob-tail tike, or trundle-tail.” The whole race is under a ban.
So industry, diligence, with their attendant advantages,—negligence, idleness, with their disadvantages, are scarcely alluded to, and but incidentally praised or blamed.
We may take one of Perriere’s Emblems, the 101st of Les Bons Engins, as our example, to show rather divergence than agreement,—or, at any rate, a different way of treating the subject.
“En ce pourtraict pouuez veoir diligence,
Tenant en main le cornet de copie:
Elle triumphé̩[e/]̩ en grand magnificence:
Car de paressé̩[e/]̩ one ne fut assoupie:
Dessoubz ses piedz tiẽt faminé̩[e/]̩ acroupie
Et attachéé̩[e/]̩ en grand captiuité:
Puis les formys par leur hastiuité
Diligemment tirent le tout ensemble:
Pour demonstrer qu’ auec oysiuité,
Impossiblé̩[e/]̩ est que grãdz biẽs l’õ assẽble.”
“A portrait here you see of diligence
Bearing in hand full plenty’s horn,
Triumphant in her great magnificence,
And ever holding laziness in scorn;
Crouching beneath her feet famine forlorn
In fetters bound of strong captivity.
And then the ants with their activity
The whole most diligently along do draw,—
A demonstration clear that idleness
Finds it impossible by nature’s law
With stores of goods her poverty to bless.”
Under the motto, Otiosi semper egentes,—“The idle always destitute,”—Whitney, p. 175, describes the same conditions,—
“Here, Idlenes doth weepe amid her wantes,
Neare famished: whome, labour whippes for Ire:
Here, labour sittes in chariot drawen with antes:
And dothe abounde with all he can desire.
The grashopper, the toyling ante derides,
In Sommers heate, cause she for coulde prouides.”
The idea is in some degree approached in the Chorus of Henry V. act i. l. 5, vol. iv. p. 491,—
“Then should the warlike Harry, like himself
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment.”
The triumph of industry may also be inferred from the marriage blessing which Ceres pronounces in the Masque of the Tempest, act iv. sc. 1, l. 110, vol. i. p. 57,—
“Earth’s increase, foison plenty,
Barns and garners never empty;
Vines with clustering bunches growing;
Plants with goodly burthen bowing;
Spring come to you at the farthest
In the very end of harvest!
Scarcity and want shall shun you,
Ceres’ blessing so is on you.”
Yet for labour, work, industry, diligence, or by whatever other name the virtue of steady exertion may be known, there is scarcely a word of praise in Shakespeare’s abundant vocabulary, and of its effects no clear description. We are told in Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 6, l. 31, vol. ix. p. 240,—
“The sweat of industry would dry and die,
But for the end it works to.... Weariness
Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth
Finds the down pillow hard.”
And in contrasting the cares of royalty with the sound sleep of the slave, Henry V. (act iv. sc. 1, l. 256, vol iv. p. 564) declares that the slave,—
“Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;
But like a lacquey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phœbus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,
Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse;
And follow so the ever running year
With profitable labour to his grave;”
but the subject is never entered upon in its moral and social aspects, unless the evils which are ascribed by the Duke of Burgundy (Henry V. act v. sc. 2, l. 48, vol. iv. p. 596) to war, are also to be attributed to the negligence which war creates,—
“The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.”
Another instance we may give of that Emblem spirit, which often occurs in Shakespeare, and at the same time we may supply an example of Freitag’s method of illustrating a subject, and of appending to it a scriptural quotation. (See Mythologia Ethica, Antwerp, 1579, p. 29.) The instance is from King Lear, act ii. sc. 4, l. 61, vol. viii. p. 317, and the subject, Contraria industriæ ac desidiæ præmia—“The opposite rewards of industry and slothfulness.”
When Lear had arrived at the Earl of Gloster’s castle, Kent inquires,—
“How chance the king comes with so small a train?
Fool. An thou hadst been set i’ the stocks for that question, thou hadst well deserv’d it.
Gent. Why, fool?
Fool. We’ll set thee to school to an ant to teach thee there’s no labouring in the winter.”
That school we have presented to us in Freitag’s engraving (see woodcut on next page), and in the stanzas of Whitney, p. 159. There are the ne’er-do-well grasshopper and the sage schoolmaster of an ant, propounding, we may suppose, the wise saying, Dum ætatis ver agitur: consule brumæ,—“While the spring of life is passing, consult for winter,”—and the poet moralizes thus:
“In winter coulde, when tree, and bushe, was bare,
And frost had nip’d the rootes of tender grasse:
The antes, with ioye did feede vpon their fare,
Which they had stor’de, while sommers season was:
To whome, for foode the grashopper did crie,
And said she staru’d, if they did helpe denie.
Whereat, an ante, with longe experience wise?
And frost, and snowe, had manie winters seene:
Inquired, what in sommer was her guise.
Quoth she, I songe, and hop’t in meadowes greene:
Then quoth the ante, content thee with thy chaunce,
For to thy songe, nowe art thou light to daunce?”
Freitag’s representation makes indeed a change in the season at which the “ante, with longe experience wise,” administers her reproof; but it is equally the school for learning in the time of youth and strength, to provide for the infirmities of age and the adversities of fortune.
And more than similar in spirit to the Emblem writers which preceded, almost emblems themselves, are the whole scenes from the Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 7 and 9, and act iii. sc. 2, where are introduced the three caskets of gold, of silver, and of lead, by the choice of which the fate of Portia is to be determined,[90]—
“The first, of gold, who this inscription bears,
‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire;’
The second, silver, which this promise carries,
‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves;’
This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt,
‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.’”
Act ii. sc. 7, lines 4–9.
And when the caskets are opened, the drawings and the inscriptions on the written scrolls, which are then taken out, examined and read, are exactly like the engravings and the verses by which emblems and their mottoes are set forth. Thus, on unlocking the golden casket, the Prince of Morocco exclaims,—
“O hell! what have we here?
A carrion Death, within whose empty eye
There is a written scroll! I’ll read the writing. [Reads.]
All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d:
Fare you well; your suit is cold.”
Act ii. sc. 7, lines 62–73.
The Prince of Arragon, also, on opening the silver casket, receives not merely a written scroll, as is represented in Symeoni’s “Distichi Morali,”—Moral Stanzas,—but what corresponds to the device or woodcut of the Emblem-book; “The portrait of a blinking idiot,” who presents to him “The schedule,” or explanatory rhymes,—
“The fire seven times tried this:
Seven times tried that judgment is,
That did never choose amiss.
Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow’s bliss:
There be fools alive, I wis,
Silver’d o’er; and so was this.
Take what wife you will to bed,
I will ever be your head:
So be gone: you are sped.”
Act ii. sc. 9, lines 63–72.
These Emblems of Shakespeare’s are therefore complete in all their parts; the mottoes, the pictures, “a carrion Death” and “a blinking idiot,” and the descriptive verses.
Coſi viuo Piacer conduce à morte.
The words of Portia (act. ii. sc. 9, l. 79, vol. ii. p. 319), when the Prince of Arragon says,—
“Sweet adieu, I’ll keep my oath,
Patiently to bear my wroth;”
are moreover a direct reference to the Emblems which occur in various authors. Les Devises Heroiqves, by Claude Paradin, Antwerp, 1562, contains the adjoining Emblem, Too lively a pleasure conducts to death.
And Giles Corrozet in his “Hecatomgraphie, C’est à dire, les descriptions de cent figures, &c.,”[91] adopting the motto, War is sweet only to the inexperienced, presents, in illustration, a butterfly fluttering towards a candle.
La guerre doulce aux inexperimentez.
Les Papillons ſe vont bruſler
A la chandelle qui reluyct.
Tel veult à la bataillé̩[e/]̩ aller
Qui ne ſcaict combien guerre nuyct.
“The Butterflies themselves are about to burn,
In the candle which still shines on and warms;
Such foolish, wish to battle fields to turn,
Who know not of the war, how much it harms.”
This device, in fact, was one extremely popular with the Emblem literati. Boissard and Messin’s Emblems, 1588, pp. 58, 59, present it to the mottoes, “Temerité dangereuse,” or Temere ac Pericvlose,—“rashly and dangerously.” Joachim Camerarius, in his Emblems Ex Volatilibus et Insectis (Nuremberg, 4to, 1596), uses it, with the motto, Brevis et damnosa Voluptas—“A short and destructive pleasure,”—and fortifies himself in adopting it by no less authorities than Æschylus and Aristotle. Emblemes of Love, with Verses in Latin, English, and Italian, by Otho Vænius, 4to, Antwerp, 1608, present Cupid to us, at p. 102, as watching the moths and the flames with great earnestness, the mottoes being, Brevis et damnosa voluptas,—“For one pleasure a thousand paynes,”—and Breue gioia,—“Brief the gladness.”
There is, too, on the same subject, the elegant device which Symeoni gives at p. 25 of his “Distichi Morali,” and which we repeat on the next page.
The subject is, Of Love too much; and the motto, “Too much pleasure leads to death,” is thus set forth, almost literally, by English rhymes:—
“In moderation Love is praised and prized,
Loss and dishonour in excess it brings:
In burning warmth how fail its boasted wings,
As simple butterflies in light chastised.”
Now can there be unreasonableness in supposing that out of these many Emblem writers Shakespeare may have had some one in view when he ascribed to Portia the words,—
“Thus hath the candle singed the moth.
O, these deliberate fools! when they do choose,
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.”
Act ii. sc. 9, lines 79–81.
The opening of the third of the caskets (act. iii. sc. 2, l. 115, vol. ii. p. 328), that made of lead, is also as much an Emblem delineation as the other two, excelling them, indeed, in the beauty of the language as well as in the excellence of the device, a very paragon of gracefulness. “What find I here?” demands Bassanio; and himself replies,—
“Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god
Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?
Or whether, riding on the balls of mine
Seem they in motion? Here are sever’d lips,
Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar
Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs
The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men,
Faster than gnats in cobwebs:[92] but her eyes,—
How could he see to do them? Having made one,
Methinks it should have power to steal both his,
And leave itself unfurnish’d. Yet look, how far
The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow
In underprizing it, so far this shadow
Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s a scroll,
The continent and summary of my fortune.
[Reads] You that choose not by the view,
Chance as fair, and choose as true!
Since this fortune falls to you,
Be content and seek no new.
If you will be pleased with this,
And hold your fortune for your bliss,
Turn you where your lady is,
And claim her with a loving kiss.”
In these scenes of the casket, Shakespeare himself, therefore, is undoubtedly an Emblem writer; and there needs only the woodcut, or the engraving, to render them as perfect examples of Emblem writing as any that issued from the pens of Alciatus, Symeoni, and Beza. The dramatist may have been sparing in his use of this tempting method of illustration, yet, with the instances before us, we arrive at the conclusion that Shakespeare knew well what Emblems were. And surely he had seen, and in some degree studied, various portions of the Emblem literature which was anterior to, or contemporary with himself.
CHAPTER V.
SIX DIRECT REFERENCES IN THE PERICLES TO BOOKS OF EMBLEMS, SOME OF THEIR DEVICES DESCRIBED, AND OF THEIR MOTTOES QUOTED.
SHAKESPEARE’S name, in three quarto editions, published during his lifetime, appears as author of the play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre; and if a decision be made that the authorship belongs to him, and that in the main the work was his composition, then our previous conjectures are changed into certainties, and we can confidently declare who were the Emblem writers he refers to, and can exhibit the very passages from their books which he has copied and adopted.
The early folio editions of the plays, those of 1623 and 1632, omit the Pericles altogether, but later editions restore it to a place among the works of Shakespeare. Dr. Farmer contends that the hand of the great dramatist is visible only in the last act; but others controvert this opinion, and maintain, though he was not the fabricator of the plot, nor the author of every dialogue and chorus, that his genius is evident in several passages.
In Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, supplemental volume, p. 13, we are informed: “The first edition of Pericles appeared in 1609,”—several years before the dramatist’s death,—“under the following title,—‘The late and much admired play, called Pericles, Prince of Tyre, &c. By William Shakespeare: London, Glosson, 1609.’”
According to the Cambridge editors, vol. ix. p. i, Preface, “another edition was issued in the same year.” The publication was repeated in 1611, 1619, 1630 and 1635, so that at the very time when Shakespeare was living, his authorship was set forth; and after his death, while his friends and contemporaries were alive, the opinion still prevailed.
The conclusion at which Knight arrives, sup. vol. pp. 118, 119, is thus stated by him: “We advocate the belief that Pyrocles, or Pericles was a very early work of Shakspere in some form, however different from that which we possess.” And again, “We think that the Pericles of the beginning of the seventeenth century was the revival of a play written by Shakspere some twenty years earlier.... Let us accept Dryden’s opinion, that
“‘Shakespeare’s own Muse his Pericles first bore.’”
The Cambridge editors, vol. ix. p. 10, ed. 1866, gave a firmer judgment:—“There can be no doubt that the hand of Shakespeare is traceable in many of the scenes, and that throughout the play he largely retouched, and even rewrote, the work of some inferior dramatist. But the text has come down to us in so maimed and imperfect a state that we can no more judge of what the play was when it left the master’s hand than we should have been able to judge of Romeo and Juliet, if we had only had the first quarto as authority for the text.”
Our own Hallam tells us,—“Pericles is generally reckoned to be in part, and only in part, the work of Shakespeare:” but with great confidence the critic Schlegel declares,—“This piece was acknowledged to be a work, but a youthful work of Shakespeare’s. It is most undoubtedly his, and it has been admitted into several later editions of his works. The supposed imperfections originate in the circumstance that Shakespeare here handled a childish and extravagant romance of the old poet Gower, and was unwilling to drag the subject out of its proper sphere. Hence he even introduces Gower himself, and makes him deliver a prologue in his own antiquated language and versification. This power of assuming so foreign a manner is at least no proof of helplessness.”
There are, then, strong probabilities that in the main the Pericles was Shakespeare’s own composition, or at least was adopted by him; it belongs to his early dramatic life, and at any rate it may be taken as evidence to show that the Emblem writers were known and made use of between 1589 and 1609 by the dramatists of England.
Books of Emblems are not indeed mentioned by their titles, nor so quoted in the Pericles as we are accustomed to do, by making direct references; they were a kind of common property, on which everyone might pasture his Pegasus or his Mule without any obligation to tell where his charger had been grazing. The allusions, however, are so plain, the words so exactly alike, that they cannot be misunderstood. The author was of a certainty acquainted with more than one Emblem writer, in more than one language, and Paradin, Symeoni, and our own Whitney may be recognised in his pages. We conclude that he had them before him, and copied from them when he penned the second scene of the Second Act of Pericles.
The Dialogue is between Simonides, king of Pentapolis, and his daughter, Thaisa, on occasion of the “triumph,” or festive pageantry, which was held in honour of her birthday. (Pericles, act. ii. sc. 2, lines 17–47, vol. ix. pp. 343, 344.)
“Enter a Knight; he passes over, and his Squire presents his shield to the Princess.
Sim. Who is the first that doth prefer himself?
Thai. A knight of Sparta, my renowned father;
And the device he bears upon his shield
Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun;
The word, ‘Lux tua vita mihi.’
Sim. He loves you well that holds his life of you.
[The Second Knight passes.
Who is the second that presents himself?
Thai. A prince of Macedon, my royal father;
And the device he bears upon his shield
Is an arm’d knight that’s conquer’d by a lady;
The motto thus, in Spanish, ‘Piu por dulzura que por fuerza.’
[The Third Knight passes.
Sim. And what’s the third?
Thai. The third of Antioch;
And his device, a wreath of chivalry;
The word, ‘Me pompæ provexit apex.’
[The Fourth Knight passes.
Sim. What is the fourth?
Thai. A burning torch that’s turned upside down;
The word, ‘Quod me alit, me extinguit.’
Sim. Which shows that beauty hath his power and will,
Which can as well inflame as it can kill.
[The Fifth Knight passes.
Thai. The fifth, an hand environed with clouds,
Holding out gold that’s by the touchstone tried;
The motto thus, ‘Sic spectanda fides.’
[The Sixth Knight passes.
Sim. And what’s
The sixth and last, the which the knight himself
With such a graceful courtesy deliver’d?
Thai. He seems to be a stranger; but his present is
A wither’d branch, that’s only green at top;
The motto, ‘In hac spe vivo.’
Sim. A pretty moral;
From the dejected state wherein he is,
He hopes by you his fortunes yet may flourish.”
As with the ornaments “in silk and gold,” which Mary Queen of Scotland worked on the bed of her son James, or with those in “the lady’s closet” at Hawsted, we trace them up to their originals, and pronounce them, however modified, to be derived from the Emblem-books of their age; so, with respect to the devices which the six knights bore on their shields, we conclude that these have their sources in books of the same character, or in the genius of the author who knew so well how to contrive and how to execute. Emblems beyond a doubt they are, though not engraved on our author’s page, as they were on the escutcheons of the knightly company. Take the device and motto of the gnats or butterflies and the candle; we trace them from Vænius, Camerarius, and Whitney, to Paradin, from Paradin to Symeoni, and from Symeoni to Giles Corrozet,—at every step we pronounce them Emblems,—and should pass the same judgment, though we could not trace them at all. It is the same with these devices in the Triumph Scene of Pericles; we discover the origin of some of them in Emblem works of, or before Shakespeare’s era,—and where we fail to discover, there we attribute invention, invention guided and perfected by masters in the art of fashioning pictures to portray thoughts by means of things. We will, however, in due order consider the devices and mottoes of these six knights who came to honour the king’s daughter.
The first knight is the Knight of Sparta,—
“And the device he bears upon his shield
Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun;
The word, Lux tua vita mihi.”
Act ii. sc. 2, lines 19–21.
A motto almost identical belongs to an old family of Worcestershire, the Blounts, of Soddington, of which Sir Edward Blount, Bart., is, or was the representative; their motto is, Lux tua vita mea,—“Thy light, my life;”—but their crest is an armed foot in the sun, not a black Ethiop reaching towards him. There was a Sir Walter Blount slain on the king’s side at the battle of Shrewsbury, and whom, previous to the battle, Shakespeare represents as sent by Henry IV. with offers of pardon to Percy. (Henry IV. Pt. 1. act. iv. sc. 3, l. 30, vol. iv. p. 323.) A Sir James Blount is also briefly introduced in Richard III. act. v. sc. 2, l. 615. The name being familiar to Shakespeare, the motto also might be;—and by a very slight alteration he has ascribed it to the Knight of Sparta.
I have consulted a considerable number of books of Emblems published before the Pericles was written, but have not discovered either the device or “the word” exactly in the form given in the play. There is a near approach to the device in Reusner’s Emblems, printed at Francfort in 1581 (Emb. 7, lib. i. p. 9). A man is represented stretching forth his hand towards the meridian sun, and the device is surmounted by the motto, Sol animi virtus,—“Virtue the sun of the soul.” The elegiac verses which follow carry out the thought with considerable clearness,—
“Sol, oculus cœli, radijs illuminat orbem:
Et Phœbe noctem disjicit alba nigram.
Sol animi virtus sensus illuminat ægros:
Et tenebras mentis discutit alma fides.
Si menti virtus, virtuti præuia lucet
Pura fides: nihil hoc clarius esse potest.
Aurea virtutis species, fideiq., Philippe,
Præradians, cœlo sic tibi monstrat iter.
Scilicet hic vitæ Sol est, & Lucifer vnus:
Hæc Phœbe, noctem quæ fugat igne suo.
Quæ dum mente vides correcta lumina; mundi
Impauidus tenebras despicis, atq. metus.
Sol magno Phœbeq. micent, & Lucifer orbi:
Dum tibi sic virtus luceat, atq. fides.”[93]
Among these lines is one to illustrate the first knight’s motto;
“Scilicet hic vitæ Sol est, & Lucifer vnus,”
“This in truth is the Sun of life, and the one Light-bringer.”
But Plautus, the celebrated comic poet of Rome, gives in his Asinaria, 3. 3. 24, almost the very words of the Spartan knight: Certe tu vita es mihi,—“Of a truth thou art life to me.”
The introduction of an Ethiop was not unusual with Shakespeare. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona (act. ii. sc. 6. l. 25, vol. i. p. 112), Proteus avers,—
“And Silvia,—witness Heaven that made her fair!—
Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope;”
and in Love’s Labour’s Lost (act. iv. sc. 3, l. 111, vol. ii. p. 144), Dumain reads these verses,—
“Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee;
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were.”
A genius so versatile as that of Shakespeare, and capable of creating almost a whole world of imagination out of a single hint, might very easily accommodate to his own idea Reusner’s suggestive motto, and make it yield the light of love to the lover rather than to the reverend sage. Failing in identifying the exact source of the “black Ethiope reaching at the sun,” we may then not unreasonably suppose that Shakespeare himself formed the device, and fitted the Latin to it.
In the Emblem-books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Latin mottoes very greatly preponderated over those of other languages; and had Shakespeare confined himself to Latin, it might remain doubtful whether he knew anything of Emblem works beyond those of our own countrymen—Barclay and Whitney—and of the two or three translations into English from Latin, French, and Italian. But the quotation of a purely Spanish motto, that on the second knight’s device, Piu por dulzura que por fuerza,—“More by gentleness than by force” (act ii. sc. 2, l. 27),—shows that his reading and observation extended beyond mere English sources, and that with other literary men of his day he had looked into, if he had not studied, the widely-known and very popular writings of Alciatus and Sambucus among Latinists, of Francisco Guzman and Hernando Soto among Spaniards, of Gabriel Faerni and Paolo Giovio among Italians, and of Bartholomew Aneau and Claude Paradin among the French.
Shakespeare gives several snatches of French, as in Twelfth Night, act iii. sc. 1, l. 68, vol. iii. p. 265,—
“Sir Andrew. Dieu vous garde, monsieur,
Viola. Et vous aussi; votre serviteur;”
and in Henry V. act iii. sc. 4; act iv. sc. 4 and 5; act v. sc. 2, vol. iv. pp. 538–540, 574–577, and 598–603: in the scenes between Katharine and Alice; Pistol and the French soldier taken prisoner; and Katharine and King Henry. Take the last instance,—
“K. Hen. Fair Katharine, and most fair,
Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms
Such as will enter at a lady’s ear
And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?
Kath. Your majesty shall mock at me; I cannot speak your England.
K. Hen. O fair Katharine, if you will love me soundly with your French
heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English
tongue. Do you like me, Kate?
Kath. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is ‘like me.’
K. Hen. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.
Kath. Que dit-il? que je suis semblable à les anges?
Alice. Oui, vraiment, sauf votre grace, ainsi dit-il.
K. Hen. I said so, dear Katharine; and I must not blush to affirm it.
Kath. O bon Dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies.”
Appropriately also to the locality of the Taming of the Shrew (act i. sc. 2, l. 24, vol. iii. p. 23), Hortensio’s house in Padua, is the Italian quotation.
“Pet. ‘Con tutto il core ben trovato,’ may I say.
Hor. Alla nostra casa ben venuto, molto honorato, signor mio Petrucio.”
We find only two Spanish sentences, those already quoted,—one being Pistol’s motto on his sword, Si fortuna me tormenta sperato me contenta; the other, that of the Prince of Macedon, on his shield, Piu por dulzura que por fuerza.
Similar proverbs and sayings abound both in Cervantes, who died in 1616, the year of Shakespeare’s death, and in the Spanish Emblem-books of an earlier date. I have very carefully examined the Emblems of Alciatus, translated into Spanish in 1549, but the nearest approach to the motto of the Prince of Macedon is, Que mas puede la eloquençia que la fortaliza (p. 124),—“Eloquence rather than force prevails,”—which may be taken from Alciat’s 180th Emblem, Eloquentia fortitudine præstantior.
Other Spanish Emblem-books of that day are the Moral Emblems of Hernando de Soto, published at Madrid in 1599, and Emblems Moralized, of Don Sebastian Orozco, published in the year 1610, also at Madrid; but neither of these gives the words of the second knight’s device. Nor are they contained in the Moral Triumphs, as they are entitled, of Francisco Guzman, published in 1587, the year after Whitney’s work appeared. The Moral Emblems, too, of Juan de Horozco, are without them,—an octavo, published at Segovia in 1589.
But, although there has been no discovery of this Spanish motto in a Spanish Emblem-book, the exact literal expression of it is found in a French work of extreme rarity—Corrozet’s “Hecatomgraphie,” Paris, 1540. There, at Emblem 28, Plus par doulceur que par force,[94]—“More by gentleness than by force,”—is the saying which introduces the old fable of the Sun and the Wind, and of their contest with the travellers. Appended are a symbolical woodcut and a French stanza,
Contre la froidure du vent,
L’homme ſe tient clos & ſe ſerre,
Mais le Soleil le plus ſouuent
Luy faict mettre ſa robé̩[e/]̩ à terre.
Plus par doulceur que par force.
which may be pretty accurately rendered by the English quatrain,—
“Against the wind’s cold blasts
Man draws his cloak around;
But while sweet sunshine lasts,
He leaves it on the ground.”
This comment in verse follows Corrozet’s Emblem,—
“Qvand le vent est fort & subit,
Violent pour robe emporter,
L’homme se serré̩[e/]̩ en son habit,
Affin qu’il ne luy puisse oster.
Mais quand le Soleil vient iecter
Sur luy ses rays clers & luysantz,
Le cauld le faict sans arrester
Despouiller ses habitz plaisantz.
* Ainsi ãmytié & doulceur
Faict plus que force & violence,
Doulceur est d’amour propre sœur,
Qui rend l’homme plein d’excellence.
II ne fault doncq mettré̩[e/]̩ en silence
Ceste tres noble courtoisie,
Mais l’extoller en precellence;
Commé̩[e/]̩ vne vertu bien choisie.
* Hommes, chassez de vous rigueur
Qui vostre grand beaulté efface,
Prenez de doulceur la vigueur,
Qui enrichera vostre face.
Doulceur ci bien meilleure grace,
Qui rend le visagé̩[e/]̩ amoureux,
Que d’estre dict en toute place
L’oultre cuidé, fol, rigoureuz.”
There is a brief allusion to this fable in King John (act iv. sc. 3, l. 155, vol. iv. p. 76), in the words of Philip, the half-brother of Faulconbridge,—
“Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can
Hold out this tempest.”
The same fable is given in Freitag’s “Mythologia Ethica,” Antwerp, 1579, p. 27. It is to a very similar motto,—
“Moderate force more powerful than impotent violence,”—to which are added, below the woodcut, two quotations from the Holy Scriptures,—
“Non quia dominamur fidei.”—2 Cor. i. 24.
“Factus sum infirmis infirmus; vt infirmos lucrifacerem.”—1 Cor. ix. 22.
“Not that we have dominion over your faith;”
“To the weak I became as weak, that I might gain the weak;”
implying that not by the rigid exercise of authority, but by a sympathising spirit, the true faith will be carried onward unto victory.
Now, as the motto of the second knight existed in French, and, as we have seen, Emblem-books were translated into Spanish, the supposition is justifiable, though we have failed to trace out the very fact, that the author of the Pericles—Shakespeare, if you will—copied the words of the motto from some Spanish Emblem-book, or book of proverbs, that had come within his observation, and which applied the saying to woman’s gentleness subduing man’s harsher nature. Future inquirers will, perhaps, clear up this little mystery, and trace the very work in which the Spanish saying is original, Piu por dulzura que por fuerza.
We pass to the third, the fourth, and the fifth knights, with their “devices” and “words;” and to illustrate these we have almost a superabundant wealth of emblem-lore, from any portion of which Shakespeare may have made his choice. His materials may have come from some one of the various editions of Claude Paradin’s, or of Gabriel Symeoni’s “Devises Heroiqves,” which appeared at Lyons and Antwerp, in French and Italian, between the years 1557 and 1590; or, as the learned Francis Douce supposes, in his Illustrations of Shakspere, pp. 302, 393, the dramatist may have seen the English translation of these authors, which was published in London in 1591, or, with greater probability, as some are inclined to say, he may have used the emblems of our countryman, Geffrey Whitney. Were it not that Daniell’s translation, in 1585, of The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius is without plates, we should include this in the number.
Of the devices in question, Whitney’s volume contains two, and the other works the three; but between certain expressions of Whitney’s and those of the Pericles, the similarity is so great, that the evidence of circumstance inclines, I may say decidedly inclines, to the conclusion that for two out of the three emblems referred to, Shakespeare was indebted to his fellow Elizabethan poet, and not to a foreign source.
From his use of Spanish and French mottoes, as well as Latin, it is evident that Shakespeare, no more than Spenser, needed the aid of translations to render the emblem treasures available to himself; and if, as some maintain,[95] the Pericles was in existence previous to the year 1591, it could not have been that use was made of the English translation of that date of the “Devises Heroiqves,” by P. S.; it remains, therefore, that for two out of the three emblems he must either have employed one of the original editions of Lyons and of Antwerp, or have been acquainted with our Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes, and have obtained help from them; and for the third emblem he must have gone to the French or Italian originals.
The third knight, named of Antioch, has for his device “a wreath of chivalry,”—
“The word, Me pompæ provexit apex;”—
(Act ii. sc. 2, l. 30,)
i. e., “The crown at the triumphal procession has carried me onward.” On the 146th leaf of Paradin’s “Devises Heroiqves,” edition Antwerp, 1562, the wreath and the motto are exactly as Shakespeare describes them. But Paradin gives a long and interesting account of the laurel-wreath, and of the high value accorded to it in Roman estimation. “It was,” as that author remarks, “the grandest recompense, or the grandest reward which the ancient Romans could think of to offer to the Chieftains over armies, to Emperors, Captains, and victorious Knights.”
Me pompæ prouexit apex.
To gratify the curiosity which some may feel respecting this subject, I add the whole of the original.
“La plus grande recompense, ou plus grãd loyer que les antiques Rommains estimassent faire aus Chefz d’armee, Empereurs, Capitaines, et Cheualiers victorieux, c’estoit de les gratifier & honnorer (selon toutefois leurs merites, estats, charges, & degrez) de certaines belles Couronnes: qui generalemẽt (à cette cause) furent apellees Militaires. Desquelles (pour auoir estées indice & enseignes de prouesse & vertu) les figures des principales & plus nobles, sont ci tirees en deuises: tant a la louange & memoire de l’antique noblesse, que pareillement à la recreation, consolation, & esperance de la moderne, aspirãt & desirãt aussi de paruenir aus gages & loyers apartenãs & dediez aus defenseurs de la recommendable Republique. La premiere donques mise en reng, representera la Trionfale: laquelle estant tissue du verd Laurier, auec ses bacques, estoit donnée au Trionfateur, auquel par decret du Senat, estoit licite de trionfer parmi la vile de Romme, sur chariot, comme victorieus de ses ennemis. Desquels neantmoins lui conuenoit deuant la pompe, faire aparoir de la deffaite, du nombre parfait de cinq mile, en vne seule bataille. La susdite Couronne trionfale, apres long trait de temps (declinant l’Empire) fut commẽcee à estre meslee, & variée de Perles & pierrerie, & puis entierement changée de Laurier naturel en Laurier buriné, & enleué, sus vn cercle d’or: comme se void par les Medailles, de plusieurs monnoyes antiques.”[96]
Shakespeare does not add a single word of explanation, or of amplification, which he might be expected to have done, had he used an English translation; but simply, and without remark, he adopts the emblem and its motto, as is natural to anyone who, though not unskilled in the language by which they are expressed, is not perfectly at home in it.
Of chivalry, however, he often speaks,—“of chivalrous design of knightly trial.” To Bolingbroke and Mowbray wager of battle is appointed to decide their differences (Richard II. act i. sc. 1, l. 202, vol. iv. p. 116), and the king says,—
“Since we can not atone you, we shall see
Justice design the victor’s chivalry.”
And (vol. iv. p. 137) John of Gaunt declares of England’s kings; they were,—
“Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
In Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son.”
But in the case of the fourth and fifth knights, it is not the simple adoption of a device which we have to consider; the very ideas, almost the very phrases in which those ideas were clothed, have also been given, pointing out that the Dramatist had before him something more than explanations in an unfamiliar tongue.
The device of the fourth knight is both described and interpreted,—
“A burning torch that’s turned upside down;
The word, Quod me alit, me extinguit.
Which shows, that beauty hath this power and will,
Which can as well inflame as it can kill.”
Act ii. sc. 2, lines 32–35.
Thus presented in Symeoni’s “Tetrastichi Morali,” edition Lyons, 1561, p. 35,—
An Italian stanza explains the device,—
“Nutriſce il fuoco à lui la cera intorno,
Et la cera l’eſtingue. ò quanti ſono,
Che dopo vn riceuuto & largo dono,
Dal donator riceuon danno & ſcorno.”
“Qui me alit,
me extinguit.”
The sense of which we now endeavour to give,—
“The wax here within nourishes the flames
And the wax stifles them; how many names
Who after a large gift and kindness shown,
Get from the giver harm and scorn alone.”
“Who nourishes me,
extinguishes me.”
Symeoni (from edition Lyons, 1574, p. 200) adds this little piece of history:—
“In the battle of the Swiss, routed near Milan by King Francis, M. de Saint Valier, the old man, father of Madame the Duchess de Valentinois,[97] and captain of a hundred gentlemen of the king’s house, bore a standard, whereon was painted a lighted torch with the head downward, on which flowed so much wax as would extinguish it, with this motto ‘Qvi me alit, me extingvit,’ imitating the emblem of the king his master; that is, ‘Nvtrisco et extingvo.’ It is the nature of the wax, which is the cause of the torch burning when held upright, that with the head downward it should be extinguished. Thus he wished to signify, that as the beauty of a lady whom he loved nourished all his thoughts, so she put him in peril of his life. See still this standard in the church of the Celestins at Lyons.”[98]
Paradin, who confessedly copies from Symeoni, agrees very nearly with this account, but gives the name of the Duchess “Diane de Poitiers,” and omits mentioning “the emblem of the king.”
Qui me alit, me extinguit.
As stated in the fac-simile Reprint of Whitney’s Emblemes, p. 302, Douce in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, pp. 302, 393, advances the opinion that the translation of Paradin into English, 1591, by P. S., was the source of Shakespeare’s torch-emblem; “but it is very note-worthy that the torch in the English translation is not a torch ‘that’s turned upside down,’ but one held uninverted, with the flame naturally ascending. This contrariety to Shakespeare’s description seems fatal therefore to the translator’s claim.” P. S., however, renders the motto, “He that nourisheth me, killeth me;” and so may put in a claim to the suggestion of the line,—
“Which can as well inflame as it can kill.”
Let us next take Whitney’s stanza of six lines to the same motto and the same device, p. 183; premising that the very same wood-block appears to have been used for the Paradin in 1562, and for the Whitney in 1586.
“Even as the waxe dothe feede, and quenche the flame,
So, loue giues life; and loue, dispaire doth giue:
The godlie loue, doth louers croune with fame:
The wicked loue, in shame dothe make them liue.
Then leaue to loue, or loue as reason will,
For, louers lewde doe vainlie languishe still.”
Now, comparing together Symeoni, Paradin, Whitney, and Shakespeare, as explanatory of the fourth knight’s emblem, we can scarcely fail to perceive in the Pericles a closer resemblance, both of thought and expression, to Whitney than to the other two. Whitney wrote,—
“So, loue giues life; and loue, dispaire doth giue,”
which the Pericles thus amplifies:
“Which shows, that beauty hath this power and will,
Which can as well inflame as it can kill.”
We conclude, therefore, from this instance, that Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes was known to the author of the Pericles, and that in this instance he has simply carried out the idea which was there suggested to him.
A slight allusion to this same device of the burning torch is made in 3 Henry VI. (act iii. sc. 2, l. 51, vol. v. p. 281), when Clarence remarks,—
“As red as fire! nay, then her wax must melt;”
but a very distinct one in Hamlet’s words (act iii. sc. 4, l. 82, vol. viii. p. 112),—
“O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire; proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.”
The “Amorvm Emblemata,”—Emblemes of Loue,—with verses in Latin, English, and Italian: 4to, Antverpiæ, M.DC.IIX., gives the same variation in the reading of the motto as Shakespeare does, namely, “Quod” for “Qui;” and as Daniell had done in The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jouius, in 1585, by substituting “Quod me alit” for “Qui me alit.”[99] The latter is the reading in Paulus Jovius himself,—and is also found in some of the early editions of this play. (See Cambridge Shakespeare, vol. ix. p. 343.) The Amorum Emblemata, by Otho Vænius, named above, and dated 1608—one year before “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” was first published, in quarto—has the Latin motto, “Qvod nvtrit, extingvit,” Englished and Italianised as follows:
“Loue killed by his owne nouriture.”
“The torche is by the wax maintayned whyle it burnes,
But turned vpsyde-down it straight goes out & dyes,
Right so by Cupids heat the louer lyues lykewyse,
But thereby is hee kild, when it contrarie turnes.”
“Quel che nutre, estingue.”
“Nutre la cera il foco, e ne lo priua
Quando è riuolto in giù: d’Amor l’ardore
Nutre e sfare l’Amante in vn calore,
Contrario effetto vn sol suggetto auiua.”
At a much earlier date, 1540, Corrozet’s Hecatomgraphie gives the inverted torch as a device, with the motto, “Mauluaise nourriture,”—
“Quelcun en prenant ses esbatz
M’ainsi mise contrebas
La cire le feu nourrissant
L’estainct & le faict perissant.”
DEVISES
Sic spectanda fides.
But the “device” and “the word” of the fifth knight,—
“An hand environed with clouds,
Holding out gold that’s by the touchstone tried;
The motto thus, Sic spectanda fides,”
(Act ii. sc. 2, lines 36–38,)
“So is fidelity to be proved,”—occur most exactly in Paradin’s “Devises Heroiques,” edition 1562, leaf 100, reverse; they are here figured.
Paradin often presents an account of the origin and appropriation of his emblems, but, in this instance, he offers only an application. “If, in order to prove fine gold, or other metals, we bring them to the touch, without trusting to their glitter or their sound;—so, to recognise good people and persons of virtue, it is needful to observe the splendour of their deeds, without dwelling upon their mere talk.”[100]
The narrative which Paradin neglects to give may be supplied from other sources. This Emblem or Symbol is, in fact, that which was appropriated to Francis I. and Francis II., kings of France from 1515 to 1560, and also to one of the Henries—probably Henry IV. The inscription on the coin, according to Paradin and Whitney’s woodcut, is “Franciscvs Dei Gratia Fran. Rex;” this is for Francis I.; but in the Hierographia Regvm Francorvm[101] (vol. i. pp. 87 and 88), the emblem is inscribed, “Franciscus II. Valesius Rex Francorum XXV. Christianissimus.” A device similar to Paradin’s then follows, and the comment, Coronatum aureum nummum, ad Lydium lapidem dextra hæc explicat & sic, id est, duris in rebus fidem explorandam docet,—“This right hand extends to the Lydian stone a coin of gold which is wreathed around, and so teaches that fidelity in times of difficulty is put to the proof.” The coin applied to the touchstone bears the inscription, “Franciscvs II. Francorv. Rex.” An original drawing,[102] by Crispin de Passe, in the possession of Sir William Stirling Maxwell, Bart., of Keir, presents the inscription in another form, “Henricvs, D. G. Francorv. Rex.” The first work of Crispin de Passe is dated 1589, and Henry IV. was recognised king of France in 1593. His portrait, and that of his queen, Mary of Medicis, were painted by De Passe; and so the Henry on the coin in the drawing above alluded to was Henry of Navarre.
The whole number of original drawings at Keir, by Crispin de Passe, is thirty-five, of the size of the following plate,—No 27 of the series.
The mottoes in Emblemata Selectiora are,—
“Pecunia sanguis et anima mortalium.
Quidquid habet mundus, regina Pecunia vincit,
Fulmineoque ictu fortius una ferit.”
“’t Geld vermag alles.
’t Geld houd den krygsknecht in zyn plichten,
Kan meer dan’t dondertuig uit richten.”
“Money the blood and life of men.
Whatever the world possesses, money rules as queen,
And more strongly than by lightning’s force smites together.”
“Money can do everything.
To his duty the warrior, ’tis money can hold,—
Than the thunderbolt greater the influence of gold.”
Very singular is the correspondence of the last two mottoes to a scene in Timon of Athens (act iv. sc. 3, lines 25, 377, vol. vii. pp. 269, 283). Timon digging in the wood finds gold, and asks,—
“What is here?
Gold! yellow, glittering, precious gold!”
and afterwards, when looking on the gold, he thus addresses it,—
“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
’Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, loved, and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian’s lap! thou visible god,
That solder’st close impossibilities,
And makest them kiss! that speak’st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels; and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!”
The Emblem which Shakespeare attributes to the fifth knight is fully described by Whitney (p. 139), with the same device and the same motto, Sic spectanda fides,[104]—
“The touche doth trye, the fine, and purest goulde:
And not the sound, or els the goodly showe.
So, if mennes wayes, and vertues, wee behoulde,
The worthy men, wee by their workes, shall knowe.
But gallant lookes, and outward showes beguile,
And ofte are clokes to cogitacions vile.”
If, in the use of this device, and in their observations upon it, Paradin, either in the original or in the English version, and Whitney be compared with the lines on the subject in Pericles, it will be seen “that Shakespeare did not derive his fifth knight’s device either from the French emblem or from its English translator, but from the English Whitney which had been lately published. Indeed, if Pericles were written, as Knight conjectures, in Shakespeare’s early manhood, previous to the year 1591, it could not be the English translation of Paradin which furnished him with the three mottoes and devices of the Triumph Scene.”
To the motto, “Amor certvs in re incerta cernitvr,”—Certain love is seen in an uncertain matter,—Otho Vænius, in his Amorum Emblemata, 4to, Antwerp, 1608, represents two Cupids at work, one trying gold in the furnace, the other on the touchstone. His stanzas, published with an English translation, as if intended for circulation in England, may, as we have conjectured, have been seen by Shakespeare before 1609, when the Pericles was revived. They are to the above motto,—
“Nummi vt adulterium exploras priùs indice, quam sit
Illo opus: haud aliter ritè probandus Amor.
Scilicet vt fuluium spectatur in ignibus aurum:
Tempore sic duro est inspicienda fides.”
“Loues triall.
As gold is by the fyre, and by the fournace tryde,
And thereby rightly known if it be bad or good,
Hard fortune and distresse do make it vnderstood,
Where true loue doth remayn, and fayned loue resyde.”
“Come l’oro nel foco.
Sû la pietra, e nel foco l’or si proua,
E nel bisogno, come l’or nel foco,
Si dee mostrar leale in ogni loco
l’Amante; e alhor si vee d’Amor la proua.”
The same metaphor of attesting characters, as gold is proved by the touchstone or by the furnace, is of frequent occurrence in Shakespeare’s undoubted plays; and sometimes the turn of the thought is so like Whitney’s as to give good warrant for the supposition, either of a common original, or that Shakespeare had read the Emblems of our Cheshire poet and made use of them.
King Richard III. says to Buckingham (act iv. sc. 2, l. 8, vol. v. p. 580),—
“O Buckingham, now do I play the touch,
To try if thou be current gold indeed.”
And in Timon of Athens (act iii. sc. 3, l. 1, vol. vii. p. 245), when Sempronius observes to a servant of Timon’s,—
“Must he needs trouble me in’t,—hum!—’bove all others?
He might have tried Lord Lucius and Lucullus;
And now Ventidius is wealthy too,
Whom he redeem’d from prison: all these
Owe their estates unto him.”
The servant immediately replies,—
“My lord,
They have all been touch’d and found base metal, for
They have all denied him.”
Isabella, too, in Measure for Measure (act ii. sc. 2, l. 149, vol. i. p. 324), most movingly declares her purpose to bribe Angelo, the lord-deputy,—
“Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,
Or stones whose rates are either rich or poor
As fancy values them; but with true prayers
That shall be up at heaven and enter there
Ere sun-rise, prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.”
In the dialogue from King John (act iii. sc. 1, l. 96, vol. iv. p. 37) between Philip of France and Constance, the same testing is alluded to. King Philip says,—
“By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause
To curse the fair proceedings of this day:
Have I not pawn’d to you my majesty?”
But Constance answers with great severity,—
“You have beguiled me with a counterfeit
Resembling majesty, which being touch’d and tried,
Proves valueless: you are forsworn, forsworn.”
One instance more shall close the subject;—it is from the Coriolanus (act iv. sc. 1, l. 44, vol. vi. p. 369), and contains a very fine allusion to the testing of true metal; the noble traitor is addressing his mother Volumnia, his wife Virgilia, and others of his kindred,—
“Fare ye well:
Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full
Of the wars’ surfeits, to go rove with one
That’s yet unbruised: bring me but out at gate.
Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and
My friends of noble touch, when I am forth,
Bid me farewell, and smile.”
So beautifully and so variously does the great dramatist carry out that one thought of making trial of men’s hearts and characters to learn the metal of which they are made.
To finish our notices and illustrations of the Triumph Scene in Pericles, there remain to be considered the device and the motto of the sixth—the stranger knight—who “with such a graceful courtesy delivered,”—
“A wither’d branch, that’s only green at top,[105]
The motto, In hac spe vivo;”
(Act ii. sc. 2, lines 43, 44;)
and on which the remark is made by Simonides,—
“A pretty moral:
From the dejected state wherein he is,
He hopes by you his fortune yet may flourish.”
With these I have found nothing identical in any of the various books of Emblems which I have examined; indeed, I cannot say that I have met with anything similar. The sixth knight’s emblem is very simple, natural, and appropriate; and I am most of all disposed to regard it as invented by Shakespeare himself to complete a scene, the greater part of which had been accommodated from other writers.
Illicitum non ſperandum.
“Spes ſimul & Nemeſis noſtris altaribus adſunt,
Scilicet vt ſperes non niſi quod liceat.”
The unlawful thing not to be hoped for.
“Here Nemesis, and Hope: our deedes doe rightlie trie,
Which warnes vs, not to hope for that, which justice doth denie.”
Yet the sixth device and motto need not remain without illustration. Hope is a theme which Emblematists could not possibly omit. Alciatus gives a series of four Emblems on this virtue,—Emblems 43, 44, 45, and 46; Sambucus, three, with the mottoes “Spes certa,” “In spe fortitudo,” and “Spes aulica;” and Whitney, three from Alciatus (pp. 53, 137, and 139); but none of these can be accepted as a proper illustration of the In hac spe vivo. Their inapplicability may be judged of from Alciat’s 46th Emblem, very closely followed by Whitney (p. 139).
In the spirit, however, if not in the words of the sixth knight’s device, the Emblem writers have fashioned their thoughts. From Paradin’s “Devises Heroiqves,” so often quoted, we select two devices (fol. 30 and 152) illustrative of our subject. The one, an arrow issuing from a tomb, on which is the sign of the cross, and having verdant shoots twined around it, was the emblem which Madame Diana of Poitiers adopted to express her strong hope of a resurrection from the dead;[106] and the same hope is also shadowed forth by ears of corn growing out of a collection of dry bones, and ripening and shedding their seed.
The first, Sola viuit in illo,—“Alone on that,” i.e., on the cross, “she lives,”—we now offer with Paradin’s explanation; “L’esperance que Madame Diane de Poitiers Illustre Duchesse de Valentinois, a de la resurrection, & que son noble esprit, contemplant les cieus en cette view, paruiendra en l’autre après la mort: est possible signifié par sa Deuise, qui est d’vn Sercueil, ou tombeau, duquel sort vn trait, acompagné de certains syons verdoyans.” i.e.,—“The hope which Madame Diana of Poitiers, the illustrious Duchess de Valentinois, has of the resurrection, and which her noble spirit, contemplating the heavens in this life, will arrive at in the other, after death: it is really signified by her Device, which is a Sepulchre or tomb, from which issues an arrow, accompanied by certain verdant shoots.”
The motto of the second is more directly to the purpose, Spes altera vitæ,—“Another hope of life,” or “The hope of another life,”—and its application is thus explained by Paradin (leaf 151 reverso),—“Les grains des Bleds, & autres herbages, semées & mortifiées en terre, se reuerdoyent, & prennent nouuel accroissement: aussi les corps humains tombãs par Mort, seront relevés en gloire, par generale resurrection.”—i.e., “The seeds of wheat, and other herbs, sown and dying in the ground, become green again, and take new growth: so human bodies cast down by Death will be raised again in glory, by the general resurrection.”
We omit the woodcut which Paradin gives, and substitute for it the 100th Emblem, part i. p. 102, from Joachim Camerarius, edition, 1595, which bears the very same motto and device.
A sentence or two from the comment may serve for explanation; “The seeds and grains of fruits and herbs are thrown upon the earth, and as it were entrusted to it; after a certain time they spring up again and produce manifold. So also our bodies, although already dead, and destined to burial in the earth, yet at the last day shall arise, the good to life, the wicked to judgment.”... “Elsewhere it is said, One Hope survives, doubtless beyond the grave.”[107]
“Mort vivifiante,” of Messin, In Morte Vita, of Boissard, edition 1588, pp. 38, 39, also receive their emblematical representation, from wheat growing among the signs of death.
“En vain nous attendons la moisson, si le grain
Ne se pourrit au creux de la terre beschée.
Sans la corruption, la nature empeschée
Retient toute semence au ventre soubterrain.”
At present we must be content to say that the source of the motto and device of the sixth knight has not been discovered. It remains for us to conjecture, what is very far from being an improbability, that Shakespeare had read Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar, published in 1579, and from the line, on page 364 of Moxon’s edition, for January (l. 54),—
“Ah, God! that love should breed both ioy and paine!”—
and from the Emblem, as Spenser names it, Anchora speme,—“Hope is my anchor,”—did invent for himself the sixth knight’s device, and its motto, In hac spe vivo,—“In this hope I live.” The step from applying so suitably the Emblems of other writers to the construction of new ones would not be great; and from what he has actually done in the invention of Emblems in the Merchant of Venice he would experience very little trouble in contriving any Emblem that he needed for the completion of his dramatic plans.
The Casket Scene and the Triumph Scene then justify our conclusion that the correspondencies between Shakespeare and the Emblem writers which preceded him are very direct and complete. It is to be accepted as a fact that he was acquainted with their works, and profited so much from them, as to be able, whenever the occasion demanded, to invent and most fittingly illustrate devices of his own. The spirit of Alciat was upon him, and in the power of that spirit he pictured forth the ideas to which his fancy had given birth.