Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

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."

"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 (1. 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

"F

`RVMENTORVM ac leguminum semina ac grana in terram projecta, ac illi quasi concredita, certo tempore renascuntur, atque multiplices fructus producunt. Sic nostra etiam corpora, quamvis jam mortua, ac terrestri sepulturæ destinata, in die tamen ultima resurgent, & piorum quidem ad vitam, impiorum vero ad judicium.". "Alibi legitur, SPES VNA SVPERSTES, nimirum post funus."

B B

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.

[graphic][merged small]

CHAPTER VI.

CLASSIFICATION OF

PARALLELISMS

WRITERS.

ᎨᏐ

[blocks in formation]

AVING established the facts that Shakespeare invented and described Emblems of his own, and that he plainly and palpably adopted several which had been designed by earlier authors, we may now, with more consistency, enter on the further labour of endeavouring to trace to their original sources the various hints and allusions, be they more or less express, which his sonnets and dramas contain in reference to Emblem literature. And we may bear in mind that we are not now proceeding on mere conjecture; we have dug into the virgin soil and have found gold that can bear every test, and may reasonably expect, as we continue our industry, to find a nugget here and a nugget there to reward our toil.

But the correspondencies and parallelisms existing in Shakespeare between himself and the earlier Emblematists are so numerous, that it becomes requisite to adopt some system of arrangement, or of classification, lest a mere chaos of confusion and not the symmetry of order should reign over our enterprise. And as "all Emblemes for the most part," says Whitney to his readers, "maie be reduced into these three kindes, which is Historicall, Naturall, & Morall,"

we shall make that division of his our foundation, and considering the various instances of imitation or of adaptation to be met with in Shakespeare, shall arrange them under the eight heads of-1, Historical Emblems; 2, Heraldic Emblems; 3, Emblems of Mythological Characters; 4, Emblems illustrative of Fables; 5, Emblems in connexion with Proverbs; 6, Emblems from Facts in Nature, and from the Properties of Animals; 7, Emblems for Poetic Ideas; and 8, Moral and Esthetic, and Miscellaneous Emblems.

A

SECTION I.

HISTORICAL EMBLEMS.

S SOON as learning revived in Europe, the great models of ancient times were again set up on

their pedestals for admiration and for guidance. Nearly all the Elizabethan authors, certainly those of highest fame, very frequently introduce, or expatiate upon, the worthies of Greece and Rome, both those which are named in the epic poems of Homer and Virgil, and those which are within the limits of authentic history. It seemed enough to awaken interest, "to point a moral, or adorn a tale," that there existed a record of old.

Shakespeare, though cultivating, it may be, little direct acquaintance with the classical writers, followed the general practice. He has built up some of the finest of his Tragedies, if not with chorus, and semi-chorus, strophe, antistrophe, and epode, like the Athenian models, yet with a

wonderfully exact appreciation of the characters of antiquity, and with a delineating power surprisingly true to history and to the leading events and circumstances in the lives of the personages whom he introduces. From possessing full and adequate scholarship, Giovio, Domenichi, Claude Mignault, Whitney, and others of the Emblem schools, went immediately to the original sources of information. Shakespeare,

we may admit, could do this only in a limited degree, and generally availed himself of assistance from the learned translators of ancient authors. Most marvellously does he transcend them in the creative attributes of high genius: they supplied the rough marble, blocks of Parian perchance, and a few tools more or less suited to the work; but it was himself, his soul and intellect and good right arm, which have produced almost living and moving forms,—

"See, my lord,

Would you not deem it breath'd? and that those veins
Did verily bear blood?"

Winter's Tale, act v. sc. 3, 1. 63.

For Medeia, one of the heroines of Euripides, and for Æneas and Anchises in their escape from Troy, Alciat (Emblem 54), and his close imitator Whitney (p. 33), give each an emblem.

To the first the motto is,

"Ei qui semel sua prodegerit, aliena creai non oportere,”–

"To that man who has once squandered his own, another person's ought not to be entrusted,”—

similar, as a counterpart, to the Saviour's words (Luke xvi. 12), "If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own."

The device is,

« ForrigeFortsæt »