Chapter XIII: Section I: Historical Emblems

AS 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, anti-strophe, 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, l. 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 credi 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,—

with the following Latin elegiacs,—

COLCHIDOS _in gremio nidum quid congeris? eheu
Neſcia cur pullos tam malè credis auis?
Dira parens Medea ſuos ſæuiſſima natos
Perdidit; & ſperas parcat vt illa tuis?_

Which Whitney (p. 33) considerably amplifies,—

“MEDEA loe with infante in her arme,
Whoe kil’de her babes, shee shoulde haue loued beste:
The swallowe yet, whoe did suspect no harme,
Hir Image likes, and hatch’d vppon her breste:[108]
And lifte her younge, vnto this tirauntes guide,
Whoe, peecemeale did her proper fruicte deuide.

Oh foolishe birde, think’ste thow, shee will haue care,
Vppon thy yonge? Whoe hathe her owne destroy’de,
And maie it bee, that shee thie birdes should spare?
Whoe slue her owne, in whome shee shoulde haue ioy’d.
Thow arte deceau’de, and arte a warninge good,
To put no truste, in them that hate theire blood.”

And to the same purport, from Alciat’s 193rd Emblem, are Whitney’s lines (p. 29),—

“MEDEA nowe, and PROGNE, blusshe for shame:
By whome, are ment yow dames of cruell kinde
Whose infantes yonge, vnto your endlesse blame,
For mothers deare, do tyrauntes of yow finde:
Oh serpentes seede, each birde, and sauage brute,
Will those condempne, that tender not theire frute.”

The stanza of his 194th Emblem is adapted by Alciat, and by Whitney after him (p. 163), to the motto,—

_Pietas filiorum in parentes_,—
“The reverence of sons towards their parents.”

PER _medios hoſteis patriæ cùm ferret ab igne
Aeneas humeris dulce parentis onus:
Parcite, dicebat: vobis ſene adorea rapto
Nulla erit, erepto ſed patre ſumma mihi._

“AENEAS beares his father, out of Troye,
When that the Greekes, the same did spoile, and sacke:
His father might of suche a sonne haue ioye,
Who throughe his foes, did beare him on his backe:
No fier, nor sworde, his valiaunt harte coulde feare,
To flee awaye, without his father deare.
Which showes, that sonnes must carefull bee, and kinde,
For to releeue their parentes in distresse:
And duringe life, that dutie shoulde them binde,
To reuerence them, that God their daies maie blesse:
And reprehendes tenne thowsande to their shame,
Who ofte dispise the stocke whereof they came.”

The two emblems of Medeia and of Æneas and Anchises, Shakespeare, in _2 Henry VI._ (act. v. sc. 2, l. 45, vol. v. p. 218), brings into close juxta-position, and unites by a single description; it is, when young Clifford comes upon the dead body of his valiant father, stretched on the field of St. Albans, and bears it lovingly on his shoulders. With strong filial affection he addresses the mangled corpse,—

“Wast thou ordain’d, dear father,
To lose thy youth in peace, and to atchieve
The silver livery of advised age;
And, in thy reverence, and thy chair-days, thus
To die in ruffian battle?”

On the instant the purpose of vengeance enters his mind, and fiercely he declares,—

“Even at this sight,
My heart is turn’d to stone; and, while ’tis mine,
It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;
No more will I their babes: tears virginal
Shall be to me even as the dew to fire;
And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,
Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.
Henceforth I will not have to do with pity:
Meet I an infant of the house of York,
Into as many gobbets will I cut it,
As wild Medea young Absyrtus did:
In cruelty will I seek out my fame.”

Then suddenly there comes a gush of feeling, and with most exquisite tenderness he adds,—

“Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford’s house:
As did Æneas old Anchises bear,
So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders:
But then Æneas bare a living load,
Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.”

The same allusion, in _Julius Cæsar_ (act. i. sc. 2, l. 107, vol. vii. p. 326), is also made by Cassius, when he compares his own natural powers with those of Cæsar, and describes their stout contest in stemming “the troubled Tyber,”—

“The torrent roar’d, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy;
But ere he could arrive the point proposed,
Cæsar cried, ‘Help me, Cassius, or I sink!’
I, as Æneas our great ancestor
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cæsar: and this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body
If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him.”

Progne, or Procne, Medeia’s counterpart for cruelty, who placed the flesh of her own son Itys before his father Tereus, is represented in Aneau’s “PICTA POESIS,” ed. 1552, p. 73, with a Latin stanza of ten lines, and the motto, “IMPOTENTIS VINDICTÆ FOEMINA,”—_The Woman of furious Vengeance._ In the _Titus Andronicus_ (act. v. sc. 2, l. 192, vol. vi. p. 522) the fearful tale of Progne enters into the plot, and a similar revenge is repeated. The two sons of the empress, Chiron and Demetrius, who had committed atrocious crimes against Lavinia the daughter of Titus, are bound, and preparations are made to inflict such punishment as the world’s history had but once before heard of. Titus declares he will bid their empress mother, “like to the earth swallow her own increase.”

“This is the feast that I have bid her to,
And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
For worse than Philomel you used my daughter,
And worse than Progne I will be revenged.”

’Tis a fearful scene, and the father calls,—

“And now prepare your throats. Lavinia, come,
[_He cuts their throats._
Receive the blood: and when that they are dead,
Let me go grind their bones to powder small,
And with this hateful liquor temper it;
And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.
Come, come, be every one officious
To make this banquet; which I wish may prove
More stern and bloody than the Centaurs’ feast.”

A character from Virgil’s _Æneid_ (bk. ii. lines 79–80; 195–8; 257–9),[109] frequently introduced both by Whitney and Shakespeare, is that of the traitor Sinon, who, with his false tears and lying words, obtained for the wooden horse and its armed men admission through the walls and within the city of Troy. Asia, he averred, would thus secure supremacy over Greece, and Troy find a perfect deliverance. It is from the “PICTA POESIS” of Anulus (p. 18), that Whitney (p. 141) on one occasion adopts the Emblem of treachery, the untrustworthy shield of Brasidas,—

_Perfidvs familiaris_,—
“The faithless friend.”

PER _medium Brasidas clypeum traiectus ab hoſte:
Quóque foret læſus ciue rogante modum.
Cui fidebam (inquit) penetrabilis vmbo fefellit._
SIC CVI _ſæpe fides credita: proditor eſt._

Thus rendered in the _Choice of Emblemes_,—

“While throughe his foes, did boulde BRASIDAS thruste,
And thought with force, their courage to confounde:
Throughe targat faire, wherein he put his truste,
His manlie corpes receau’d a mortall wounde.
Beinge ask’d the cause, before he yeelded ghoste:
Quoth hee, my shielde, wherein I trusted moste.

Euen so it happes, wee ofte our bayne doe brue,
When ere wee trie, wee trust the gallante showe:
When frendes suppoas’d, do prooue them selues vntrue.
When SINON false, in DAMONS shape dothe goe:
Then gulfes of griefe, doe swallowe vp our mirthe,
And thoughtes ofte times, doe shrow’d vs in the earthe.

* * * * * *

But, if thou doe inioye a faithfull frende,
See that with care, thou keepe him as thy life:
And if perhappes he doe, that may offende,
Yet waye thy frende: and shunne the cause of strife,
Remembringe still, there is no greater crosse;
Then of a frende, for, to sustaine the losse.

Yet, if this knotte of frendship be to knitte,
And SCIPIO yet, his LELIVS can not finde?
Content thy selfe, till some occasion fitte,
Allot thee one, according to thy minde:
Then trie, and truste: so maiste thou liue in rest,
But chieflie see, thou truste thy selfe the beste?”

And again, adopting the Emblem of John Sambucus, edition Antwerp, 1564, p. 184,[110] and the motto,

_Nusquam tuta fides_,—
“Trustfulness is never sure,”

with the exemplification of the Elephant and the undermined tree, Whitney writes (p. 150),—

“No state so sure, no seate within this life
But that maie fall, thoughe longe the same haue stoode:
Here fauninge foes, here fained frendes are rife.
With pickthankes, blabbes, and subtill Sinons broode,
Who when wee truste, they worke our ouerthrowe,
And vndermine the grounde, wheron wee goe.

The Olephant so huge, and stronge to see,
No perill fear’d: but thought a sleepe to gaine
But foes before had vndermin’de the tree,
And downe he falles, and so by them was slaine:
First trye, then truste: like goulde, the copper showes:
And NERO ofte, in NVMAS clothinge goes.”

Freitag’s “MYTHOLOGIA ETHICA,” pp. 176, 177, sets forth the well-known fable of the Countryman and the Viper, which after receiving warmth and nourishment attempted to wound its benefactor. The motto is,—

_Maleficio beneficium compensatum_,—
“A good deed recompensed by maliciousness.”

“_Qui reddit mala pro bonis, non recedet malum de domo
eius._”—_Prouerb_, 17, 13.
“Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.”

Nicolas Reusner, also, edition Francfort, 1581, bk. ii. p. 81, has an Emblem on this subject, and narrates the whole fable,—

_Merces anguina_,—“Reward from a serpent.”

“Frigore confectum quem rusticus inuenit anguem
Imprudens fotum recreat ecce sinu.
Immemor hic miserum lethale sauciat ictu:
Reddidit hìc vitam; reddidit ille necem.
Si benefacta locis malè, simplex mente, bonusq.:
Non benefacta quidem, sed malefacta puta.
Ingratis seruire nefas, gratisq. nocere:
Quod benè fit gratis, hoc solet esse lucro.”[111]

In several instances in his historical plays, Shakespeare very expressly refers to this fable. On hearing that some of his nobles had made peace with Bolingbroke, in _Richard II._ (act. iii. sc. 2, l. 129, vol. iv. p. 168), the king exclaims,—

“O villains, vipers, damn’d without redemption!
Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!
Snakes, in my heart blood warm’d that sting my heart!”

In the same drama (act. v. sc. 3, l. 57, vol. iv. p. 210) York urges Bolingbroke,—

“Forget to pity him, lest thy pity prove,
A serpent that will sting thee to the heart.”

And another, bearing the name of York, in _2 Henry VI._ (act. iii. sc. 1, l. 343, vol. v. p. 162), declares to the nobles,—

“I fear me, you but warm the starved snake,
Who, cherish’d in your breasts, will sting your hearts.”

Also Hermia, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act. ii. sc. 2, l. 145, vol. ii. p. 225), when awakened from her trance-like sleep, calls on her beloved,—

“Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast.”

Whitney combines Freitag’s and Reusner’s Emblems under one motto (p. 189), _In sinu alere serpentem_,—“To nourish a serpent in the bosom,”—but applies them to the siege of Antwerp in 1585 in a way which Schiller’s famous history fully confirms:[112]—“The government of the citizens was shared among too many hands, and too strongly influenced by a disorderly populace to allow any one to consider with calmness, to decide with judgment, or to execute with firmness.”

The typical Sinon is here introduced by Whitney,—

“Thovghe, cittie stronge the cannons shotte dispise,
And deadlie foes, beseege the same in vaine:
Yet, in the walles if pining famine rise,
Or else some impe of SINON, there remaine.
What can preuaile your bulwarkes? and your towers,
When, all your force, your inwarde foe deuoures.”

In fact, Sinon seems to have been the accepted representative of treachery in every form; for when Camillus, at the siege of Faleria, rewarded the Schoolmaster as he deserved for attempting to give up his scholars into captivity, the occurence is thus described in the _Choice of Emblemes_, p. 113,—

“With that, hee caus’de this SINON to bee stripte,
And whippes, and roddes, vnto the schollers gaue:
Whome, backe againe, into the toune they whipte.”

Shakespeare is even more frequent in his allusions to this same Sinon. The _Rape of Lucrece_, published in 1594, speaks of him as “the perjured Sinon,” “the false Sinon,” “the subtle Sinon,” and avers (vol. ix. p. 537, l. 1513),—

“Like a constant and confirmed devil,
He entertain’d a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconc’d his secret evil,—
That jealousy itself could not mistrust,
False creeping craft and perjury should thrust
Into so bright a day such black-faced storms,
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.”

Also in _3 Henry VI._ (act. iii. sc. 2, l. 188, vol. v. p. 285), and in _Titus Andronicus_ (act. v. sc. 3, l. 85, vol. vi. p. 527), we read,—

“I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,
And like a Sinon, take another Troy;”

and,—

“Tell us what Sinon hath bewitch’d our ears,
Or who hath brought the fatal engine in
That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.”

But in _Cymbeline_ (act. iii. sc. 4, l. 57, vol. ix. p. 226), Æneas is joined in almost the same condemnation with Sinon. Pisano expostulates with Imogen,—

“_Pis._ Good madam, hear me.
_Imo._ True honest men being heard, like false Æneas,
Were in his time thought false; and Sinon’s weeping
Did scandal many a holy tear, took pity
From most true wretchedness: so thou, Posthumus,
Wilt lay the leaven on all proper men;
Goodly and gallant shall be false and perjured
From thy great fail.”

Doubtless it will be said that such allusions to the characters in classical history are the common property of the whole modern race of literary men, and that to make them implies no actual copying by later writers of those who preceded them in point of time; still in the examples just given there are such coincidences of expression, not merely of idea, as justify the opinion that Shakespeare both availed himself of the usual sources of information, and had read and taken into his mind the very colour of thought which Whitney had lately spread over the same subject.

The great Roman names, Curtius, Cocles, Manlius and Fabius gave Whitney the opportunity for saying (p. 109),—

“With these, by righte comes _Coriolanus_ in,
Whose cruell minde did make his countrie smarte;
Till mothers teares, and wiues, did pittie winne.”

And these few lines, in fact, are a summary of the plot and chief incidents of Shakespeare’s play of _Coriolanus_, so that it is far from being unlikely that they may have been the germ, the very seed-bed of that vigorous offset of his genius. Almost the exact blame which Whitney imputes is also attributed to Coriolanus by his mother Volumnia (act. v. sc. 3, l. 101, vol. vi. p. 407), who charges him with,—

“Making the mother, wife and child, to see
The son, the husband and the father, tearing
His country’s bowels out.”

And when wife and mother have conquered his strong hatred against his native land (act. v. sc. 3, l. 206, vol. vi. p. 411), Coriolanus observes to them,—

“Ladies, you deserve
To have a temple built you: all the swords
In Italy, and her confederate arms,
Could not have made this peace.”

The subject of Alciat’s 119th Emblem, edition 1581, p. 430, is the _Death of Brutus_, with the motto,—

_Fortuna virtutem superans_,—
“Fortune overcoming valour.”

CÆSAREO _poſtquàm ſuperatus milite, vidit
Ciuili vndantem ſanguine Pharſaliam;
Jam iam ſtricturus moribunda in pectora ferrum,
Audaci hos Brutus protulit ore ſonos:
Infelix virtus; & ſolis prouida verbis,
Fortunam in rebus cur ſequeris dominam?_

On the ideas here suggested Whitney enlarges, p. 70, and writes,—

“When BRVTVS knewe, AVGVSTVS parte preuail’de,
And sawe his frendes, lie bleedinge on the grounde,
Such deadlie griefe, his noble harte assail’de,
That with his sworde, hee did him selfe confounde:
But firste, his frendes perswaded him to flee,
Whoe aunswer’d thus, my flighte with handes shalbee.

And bending then to blade, his bared breste,
Hee did pronounce, theise wordes with courage great:
Oh Prowes vaine, I longe did loue thee beste,
But nowe I see, thou doest on fortune waite.
Wherefore with paine, I nowe doe prouue it true,
That fortunes force, maie valiant hartes subdue.”

So, in the _Julius Cæsar_ (act. v. sc. 5, l. 25, vol. vii. p. 413), the battle of Philippi being irretrievably lost to the party of the Republic, and Marcus Cato slain, Brutus, meditating self-destruction, desires aid from one of his friends that he may accomplish his purpose,—

“Good Volumnius,
Thou know’st that we two went to school together:
Even for that our love of old, I prithee,
Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it.
_Vol._ That’s not an office for a friend, my lord.”

The alarum continues,—the friends of Brutus again remonstrate, and Clitus urges him to escape (l. 30),—

“_Cli._ Fly, fly, my lord; there is no tarrying here.
_Bru._ Farewell to you; and you; and you, Volumnius.
Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep;
Farewell to thee, too, Strato. Countrymen,
My heart doth joy that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.
I shall have glory by this losing day,
More than Octavius and Mark Antony
By this vile contest shall attain unto.
So, fare you well at once; for Brutus’ tongue
Hath almost ended his life’s history:
Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest,
That have but labour’d to attain this hour.”

Once more is the alarum raised,—“Fly, fly, fly.” “Hence, I will follow thee,” is the hero’s answer; but when friends are gone, he turns to one of his few attendants, and entreats (l. 44),—

“I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord: Thou art a fellow of a good respect; Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it: Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?

_Stra._ Give me your hand first: fare you well, my lord.
_Bru._ Farewell, good Strato. [_Runs on his sword._] Cæsar, now be
still:
I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.@span 6: [_Dies._]”@

In the presence of the conquerors Strato then declares,—

“The conquerors can but make a fire of him;
For Brutus only overcame himself,
And no man else hath honour by his death.
_Lucil._ So Brutus should be found. I thank thee, Brutus,
That thou hast proved Lucilius’ saying true.”

And we must mark how finely the dramatist represents the victors at Philippi testifying to the virtues of their foe (l. 68),—

“_Antony._ This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
* * * * * *
_Octavius._[113] According to his virtue let us use him,
With all respect and rites of burial.
Within my tent his bones to-night shall lie,
Most like a soldier, order’d honourably.”

The mode of the catastrophe differs slightly in the two writers; and undoubtedly, in this as in most other instances, there is a very wide difference between the life and spiritedness of the dramatist, and the comparative lameness of the Emblem writers,—the former instinct with the fire of genius, the latter seldom rising above an earth-bound mediocrity; yet the references or allusions by the later poet to the earlier can scarcely be questioned; they are too decided to be the results of pure accident.

In one instance Whitney (p. 110, l. 32) hits off the characteristics of Brutus and Cassius in a single line,—

“With _Brutus_ boulde, and _Cassius_, pale and wan.”

It is remarkable how Shakespeare amplifies these two epithets, “pale and wan” into a full description of the personal manner and appearance of Cassius. Cæsar and his train have re-entered upon the scene, and (act. i. sc. 2, l. 192, vol. vii. p. 329) the dictator haughtily and satirically gives order,—

“_Cæs._ Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
_Ant._ Fear him not, Cæsar; he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
_Cæs._ Would he were fatter! but I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.”

“Pale and wan,”—two most fruitful words, certainly, to bring forth so graphic a description of men that are “very dangerous.”

Of names historic the Emblem writers give a great many examples, but only a few, within the prescribed boundaries of our subject, that are at the same time historic and Shakespearean.

_Vel post mortem formidolosi_,—“Even after death to be dreaded,”—is the sentiment with which Alciatus (Emblem 170), and Whitney after him (p. 194), associate the noisy drum and the shrill-sounding horn; and thus the Emblem-classic illustrates his device,—

“CÆTERA _mutescent, coriumq. silebit ouillum,
Si confecta lupi tympana pelle sonent.
Hanc membrana ouium sic exhorrescit, vt hostem
Exanimis quamuis non ferat exanimem.
Sic cute detracta Ziscas, in tympana versus,
Boëmos potuit vincere Pontifices._”

Literally rendered the Latin elegiacs declare,—

“Other things will grow dumb, and the sheep-skin be silent,
If drums made from the hide of a wolf should sound.
Of this so sore afraid is the membrane of sheep,
That though dead it could not bear its dead foe.
So Zisca’s skin torn off, he, changed to a drum,
The Bohemian chief priests was able to conquer.”

These curious ideas Whitney adopts, and most lovingly enlarges,—

“A Secret cause, that none can comprehende,
In natures workes is often to bee seene;
As, deathe can not the ancient discorde ende,
That raigneth still, the wolfe and sheepe betweene;
The like, beside in many thinges are knowne,
The cause reueal’d, to none, but GOD alone.

For, as the wolfe, the sillye sheepe did feare,
And make him still to tremble, at his barke:
So beinge dead, which is most straunge to heare,
This feare remaynes, as learned men did marke;
For with their skinnes, if that two drommes bee bounde,
That, clad with sheepe, doth iarre; and hathe no sounde.

And, if that stringes bee of their intrailes wroughte,
And ioyned both, to make a siluer sounde:
No cunninge care can tune them as they oughte,
But one is harde, the other still is droun’de:
Or discordes foule, the harmonie doe marre;
And nothinge can appease this inward warre.

So, ZISCA thoughte when deathe did shorte his daies,
As with his voice, hee erste did daunte his foes;
That after deathe hee shoulde new terror raise,
And make them flee, as when they felte his bloes.
Wherefore, hee charg’d that they his skinne shoulde frame,
To fitte a dromme, and marche forth with the same.

So, HECTORS sighte greate feare in Greekes did worke,
When hee was showed on horsebacke, beeinge dead:
HVNIADES, the terrour of the Turke,
Thoughe layed in graue, yet at his name they fled:
And cryinge babes, they ceased with the same,
The like in FRANCE, sometime did TALBOTS name.”

The cry[114] “A Talbot! a Talbot!” is represented by Shakespeare as sufficient in itself to make the French soldiers flee and leave their clothes behind; _1 Henry VI._ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 78, vol. v. p. 29),—

_Sold._i> I’ll be so bold to take what they have left.
The cry of Talbot serves me for a sword;
For I have loaden me with many spoils
Using no other weapon but his name.”

And in the same play (act ii. sc. 3, l. 11, vol. v. p. 32), when the Countess of Auvergne is visited by the dreaded Englishman, the announcement is made,—

“_Mess._ Madam,
According as your ladyship desired,
By message craved, so is Lord Talbot come.

_Count._ And he is welcome. What! is this the man?

_Mess._ Madam, it is.

_Count._ Is this the scourge of France?
Is this the Talbot, so much fear’d abroad
That with his name the mothers still their babes?”

Five or six instances may be found in which Shakespeare introduces the word “lottery;” and, historically, the word is deserving of notice,—for it was in his boyhood that the first public lottery was set on foot in England; and judging from the nature of the prizes, he appears to have made allusion to them. There were 40,000 chances,—according to Bohn’s _Standard Library Cyclopædia_, vol. iii. p. 279,—sold at ten shillings each: “The prizes consisted of articles of plate, and the profit was employed for the repair of certain harbours.” The drawing took place at the west door of St. Paul’s Cathedral; it began “23rd January, 1569, and continued incessantly drawing, _day and night_, till the 6th of May following.”[115] How such an event should find its record in a Book of Emblems may at first be accounted strange; but in addition to her other mottoes, Queen Elizabeth had, on this occasion of the lottery, chosen a special motto, which Whitney (p. 61) attaches to the device,—

_Silentium_,—“Silence,”—

which, after six stanzas, he closes with the lines,—

“Th’ Ægyptians wise, and other nations farre,
Vnto this ende, HARPOCRATES deuis’de,
Whose finger, still did seeme his mouthe to barre,
To bid them speake, no more than that suffis’de,
Which signe thoughe oulde, wee may not yet detest,
But marke it well, if wee will liue in reste.”

_Written to the like effecte, vppon
Video, & taceo.
Her Maieſties poëſie, at the great Lotterie in_ LONDON,
_begon_ M.D.LXVIII. _and ended_ M.D.LXIX.

I See, and houlde my peace: a Princelie Poëſie righte,
For euerie faulte, ſhoulde not provoke, a Prince, or man of mighte.
For if that IOVE ſhoulde ſhoote, ſo ofte as men offende,
The Poëttes ſaie, his thunderboltes ſhoulde ſoone bee at an ende.
Then happie wee that haue, a Princeſſe ſo inclin’de.
That when as iuſtice drawes hir ſworde, hath mercie in her minde,
And to declare the ſame, howe prone ſhee is to ſaue:
Her Maieſtie did make her choice, this Poëſie for to haue.

_Sed piger ad pœnas princeps, ad prœmia velox:
Cuique dolet, quoties cogitur eſſe ferox._[116]

Lines from Ovid, _2 Trist._, are in the margin,—

“_Si quoties peccãt homines sua fulmina mittat
Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit._”[117]

Silence, also, was represented by the image of the goddess Ageniora. In an Emblem-book by Peter Costalius, _Pegma_, edition Lyons, 1555, p. 109, he refers to her example, and concludes his stanza with the words, _Si sapis à nostra disce tacere dea_,—“If thou art wise, learn from our goddess to be silent.”

That Casket Scene in the _Merchant of Venice_ (act i. sc. 2, l. 24),—from which we have already made long extracts,—contains a reference to lotteries quite in character with the prizes, “articles of plate and rich jewelry.” Portia is deeming it hard, that according to her father’s will, she “may neither choose whom she would, nor refuse whom she disliked.” “Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none?”

“_Ner._ Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men, at their death, have good inspirations: therefore, the lottery, that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver, and lead,—whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you—will, no doubt, never be chosen by any rightly, but one who shall rightly love.”

The Prince of Morocco (act ii. sc. 1, l. 11) affirms to Portia,—

“I would not change this hue,
Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen;”

and Portia answers,—

“In terms of choice I am not solely led
By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes;
Besides the lottery of my destiny
Bars me the right of voluntary choosing.”

The prevalence of lotteries, too, seems to be intimated by the Clown in _All’s Well that Ends Well_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 73, vol. iii. p. 123), when he repeats the song,—

“Among nine bad if one be good,
Among nine bad if one be good,
There’s yet one good in ten;”

and the Countess reproving him says,—

“What, one good in ten? you corrupt the song, sirrah.

_Clo._ One good woman in ten, madam; which is a purifying o’ the song: would God would serve the world so all the year! we’d find no fault with the tithe-woman, if I were the parson: one in ten, quoth a’! an’ we might have a good woman born but one every blazing star, or at an earthquake, ’twould mend the lottery well: a man may draw his heart out, ere a’ pluck one.”

Shakespeare’s words will receive a not inapt illustration from the sermon of a contemporary prelate, Dr. Chatterton, Bishop of Chester from 1579 to 1595, and to whom Whitney dedicated the Emblem on p. 120, _Vigilantia et custodia_,—“Watchfulness and guardianship.”[118] He was preaching a wedding sermon in Cambridge, and Ormerod, i. p. 146, quoting King’s _Vale Royal_, tells us,—

“He used this merry comparison. The choice of a wife is full of hazard, not unlike to a man groping for one fish in a barrel full of serpents: if he escape harm of the snakes, and light on the fish, he may be thought fortunate; yet let him not boast, for perhaps it may be but an eel.”

That “good woman” “to mend the lottery well,” that “one fish in a barrel full of serpents,” came, however, to the chance of one of Cæsar’s friends. Even when Antony (_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii. sc. 2, l. 245, vol. ix. p. 40) was under the witchery of the “rare Egyptian queen,” that “did make defect, perfection,” the dramatist says,—

“If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
The heart of Antony, Octavia is
A blessed lottery to him.”

The Emblems applicable to Shakespeare’s historical characters are only a few among the numbers that occur in the Emblem writers, as Alciat, Cousteau, Giovio, Symeoni, &c.: but our choice is limited, and there would be no pertinency in selecting devices to which in the dramas of our author there are no corresponding expressions of thought, though there may be parallelisms of subject.

Virtati fortuna comes
_Alciat’s Arms (Giovio, ed. 1562)._
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