Chapter VI

CLASSIFICATION OF THE CORRESPONDENCIES AND PARALLELISMS OF SHAKESPEARE WITH EMBLEM WRITERS.

HAVING 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 Æsthetic, and Miscellaneous Emblems.

------------------