Chapter XXIV: Act III: SCENE 1. Page 272

DUKE. ... merely thou art _Death's fool_;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still.

And in _Pericles_, Act III. Scene 2, "to please the _fool and death_." One note may serve for both these passages.

Dr. Warburton had conceived an allusion in the first speech to certain characters of _death and the fool_ in the old _moralities_, in which, most unquestionably, they are not to be found, at least, in any which now remain. It is in this place that the latter part of Mr. Steevens's note on the passage in _Pericles_ should have been introduced, with the following additional circumstances that had probably escaped the learned commentator's recollection; that his informant concerning the skeleton character at the fair remembered also to have seen another personage in the habit of a fool: and that arriving when the performances at the booth were finished for the evening, he could not succeed in procuring a repetition of the piece, losing thereby the means of all further information on the subject. It is therefore probable that the remainder of Dr. Warburton's note is correct, although he may have erred in his designation of this mummery. What connection the subject in question has with the old initial letter of _death and the fool_, and the _dance of death_, is shown in a note to _Love's labour lost_, vol. v. p. 316, and in another on the passage in _Pericles_, both of which should have been incorporated with the present.

Mr. Ritson, in correcting a remark made by the ingenious continuator of Ben Jonson's _Sad shepherd_, has inaccurately stated that the figures in the initial letter were "actually copied from the margin of an old missal." The letter that occurs in Stowe's _Survey of London_, edit. 1618, 4to, is only an enlarged but imperfect copy from another belonging to a regular dance of death used as initials by some of the Basil printers in the sixteenth century, and which, from the extraordinary skill that accompanies their execution, will ever rank amongst the finest efforts in the art of engraving on blocks of wood or metal. Most of the subjects in this dance of death have undoubtedly been supplied by that curious pageant of mortality which, during the middle ages, was so great a favourite as to be perpetually exhibited to the people either in the sculpture and painting of ecclesiastical buildings, or in the books adapted to the service of the church: yet some of them but ill accord with those serious ideas which the nature of the subject is calculated to inspire. In these the artist has indulged a vein of broad and satirical humour which was not wholly reserved for the caricaturists of modern times; and in one or two instances he has even overleaped the bounds of decency. The letter in Stowe's _Survey_ is the only one that appears to have been imitated from the above alphabet; and as it throws some light on that part of the Duke's speech which occasioned the present note, it is here very accurately copied. It is to be remembered that in most of the old _dances of death_ the subject of the fool is introduced: and it is, on the whole, extremely probable that some such representation might have suggested the image before us.

SCENE 1. Page 285.

CLAUD. ... and the delighted spirit
To bathe in _fiery floods_, or to reside
In thrilling regions of _thick-ribbed ice_;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And _blown with restless violence_ round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine _howling_!----

It is difficult to decide whether Shakspeare is here alluding to the pains of hell or purgatory. May not the whole be a mere poetical rhapsody originating in the recollection of what he had read in books of Catholic divinity? for it is very certain that some of these were extremely familiar to him. Among them he might have seen a compilation on the pains of hell, entitled _Examples howe mortall synne maketh the synners inobedyentes to have many paynes and dolours within the fyre of hell_; black letter, no date, 12mo, and chiefly extracted from that once popular work, the _Sermones discipuli_, which contains at the end a promptuary of examples for the use of preachers. From this little volume it may be worth while to select the following passage, as according in some degree with the matter of Claudio's speech:--"he tolde that he sawe in hell a torment of an _yzye ponde_ where the soules the whiche therin were tormented cryed so horryble that they were herde unto heven," sign. B. iij. "And the sayde beest was upon a ponde full of _strong yse_, the which beest devoured the soules within his wombe in suche maner that they became as unto nothynge by the tormentes that they suffred. Afterwarde he put them out of his wombe _within the yse of the sayde ponde_," sign. G. iij. "The caytyve was in syke wyse, for she myght not helpe herself, the whiche herde terryble cryes and _howlynges of soules_," sign. H. And again, "And the devyll was bounde by every joynture of all his membres with great chaynes of yron and of copre brennyng. And of great torment and vehement woodnes whereof he was full he turned hym from the one syde unto the other, and stretched out his handes in the multytude of the sayde soules, and toke them, and strayned them in lykewyse as men may do a clustre of grapes in theyr handes for to make the wyne come forth. And in such maner he strayned them that he eyther brake theyr heedes, or theyr fete, or handes, or some other membres. Afterward _he syghed and blewe and dysperpeled the sayde soules_ into many of the tormentes of the fyre of hell," sign. H. iiij.

The following lines from the sixth book of Phaer's Virgil might have furnished some materials on the occasion:

"... some _hie in ayer_ doth hang in pinnes
Some fleeting ben in _floods_, and deepe in gulfes themselves they tier
Till sinnes away be _washt, or clensed cleer with purgin fire_."

In the old legend of _Saint Patrick's purgatory_ mention is made of a lake of ice and snow, into which persons were plunged up to their necks; and in the _Shepherd's calendar_, chap, xviii. there is a description of hell as "the rewarde of them that kepen the X comaundements of the Devyll," in in which these lines occur:

"... a _great froste_ in a water rounes
And after a _bytter wynde_ comes
Whiche gothe through the soules with yre;
Fendes with pokes pulle theyr flesshe ysondre,
They fyght and curse, and eche on other wonder."

Chaucer, in his _Assemblie of foules_, has given an abridgement of Cicero's dream of Scipio; and speaking of souls in hell, he says:

"And breakers of the lawe, sothe to saine
And likerous folke, after that they been dede
_Shull whirle about the world_ alway in paine
Till many a world be passed."

It was not until the seventh century that the doctrine of purgatory was confirmed, when "they held that departed souls expiated their sins by _baths_, _ice_, _hanging in the air_, &c.," says a curious writer on this subject. See Douglas's _Vitis degeneris_, 1668, 12mo, p. 77.

With respect to the much contested and obscure expression of _bathing the delighted spirit in fiery floods_, Milton appears to have felt less difficulty in its construction than we do at present; for he certainly remembered it when he made Comus say,

"... one sip of this
Will _bathe_ the drooping _spirits in delight_
Beyond the bliss of dreams."

SCENE 2. Page 295.

ELB. Bless you good _father friar_.

DUKE. And you good _brother father_.

Mr. Tyrwhitt remarks that _father friar_ is a blunder, and so indeed the Duke from his answer seems to consider it. Yet friars have often been addressed in this way; and a few pages further Escalus calls the Duke _father_, who had just been introduced to him as a _friar_. The Duke, indeed, soon after uses the term _brother_ when speaking of himself. Whilst the passage quoted by Mr. Steevens gives support to Mr. Tyrwhitt's observation that _friar_ is a corruption of the French _frere_, it seems to disprove his assertion that Elbow's phrase is erroneous.

SCENE 2. Page 298.

LUCIO. What, is there none of _Pygmalion's images, newly made
woman_, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket, and
extracting it clutch'd?

None of the explanations of this speech are satisfactory, but least of all such part of a note by the author of these remarks, as refers to the _picklock_, which has been better accounted for by Mr. Ritson. It is probable, after all, that Lucio simply means to ask the clown if _he has no newly-coined money wherewith to bribe_ the officers of justice, alluding to the portrait of the queen.

SCENE 2. Page 308.

ESCAL. This would make mercy _swear and play the tyrant_.

The old belief certainly was that tyrants in general swore lustily; but here seems to be a particular allusion to the character of Herod, in the mystery of _The slaughter of the innocents_, formerly acted by the city companies in their pageants, and of which those for Chester and Coventry are still preserved in the British Museum. In this curious specimen of our early drama, Herod is made to swear by Mahound, by cockes blood, &c. He is uniformly in a passion throughout the piece; and this, according to the stage direction, "Here Erode ragis," is exemplified by some extraordinary gesticulation. See the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone on a passage in _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2.

SCENE 2. Page 310.

DUKE. ... and now is he _resolved_ to die.

Mr. Reed has certainly adduced an instance which proves that _resolved_ occasionally means _satisfied_, and we still talk of resolving difficulties, or a question in arithmetic; but in the passage before us it seems rather to signify _resolute_, _firm_, _determined_. Thus the allegorical romance of _Le chevalier deliberé_ was translated into English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the title of _The resolved gentleman_; and into Spanish by that of _Il cavalero determinado_.