Henry Green

“ An Emblem once launched into the world of letters was treated as a fable or a proverb,—it became for the time and the occasion the property of whoever chose to take it. In using Emblems, therefore, Shakespeare is no more to be regarded as a copyist than his contemporaries are, but simply as one who exercised a recognised right to appropriate what he needed of the general stock of Emblem notions. ”

“ And as we mark the wide and increasing streams of the Emblem Literature flowing over every European land, and how the common tongue of Rome gave one language to all Christendom, can we deem it probable that any man of genius, of discernment, and of only the usual attainments of his compeers, would live by the side of these streams and never dip his finger into the waters, nor wet even the soles of his feet where the babbling emblems flowed?
Some there have been to maintain that Shakespeare had visited the Netherlands, or even resided there ”

“ Fables have ever been a floating literature,—borne hither and thither on the current of Time,—used by any one, and properly belonging to no one. How they have circulated from land to land, and from age to age, we cannot tell; whence they first arose it is impossible to divine. There exist, we are told, fables collected by Bidpai in Sanscrit, by Lokman in Arabic, by Æsop in Greek, and by Phædrus in Latin; and they seem to have been interchanged and borrowed one from the other as if they were the property of the world,—handed down from the ancestorial times of a remote antiquity. ”

“ Our office, however, is not to exercise the inventive faculty, nor, even when the invention has been perfected for us by the poet’s fancy, to give it a visible form and to portray its outward graces. We have simply to gather up the scattered records of the past, and to show what correspondencies there really are between Shakespeare and the elder Emblem artists, and, when we can, to point out where to him they have been models, imitated and thus approved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been doubted if Fables should be classed among the Emblem Literature,—but whether nude, as other emblems have been named when unclothed in the ornaments of wood or copper engravings, or adorned with richly embellished devices, they are, as Whitney would name them, naturally emblematical. Apart from whatever artistic skill can effect for them, they have in themselves meanings to be evolved different from those which the words convey. The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass are not simply names for the veritable animals, but emblems of different characters and qualities among the human race ”

“ It established, if it did not introduce, a new style for Emblem Literature, the classical in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mythic. It is by no means certain that the change should be named an unmixed gain. Stately and artificial, the school of Alciat and his followers indicates at every stanza its full acquaintance with mythologies Greek and Roman, but it is deficient in the easy expression which distinguishes the poet of nature above him whom learning chiefly guides: it seldom betrays either enthusiasm of genius or depth of imaginative power. ”

“ The study of the old Emblem-books certainly possesses little of the charm which the unsurpassed natural power of Shakespeare has infused into his dramas, and which time does not diminish; yet that study is no barren pursuit for such as will seek for “virtue’s fair form and graces excellent,” or who desire to note how the learning of the age disported itself at its hours of recreation, and how, with few exceptions, it held firm its allegiance to purity of thought, and reverenced the spirit of religion. ”

“ Several of the Emblem writers, however, propound a sentiment not so generally known, in which Apollo’s favourite tree, the Laurel, is the token of a soul unalarmed by threatening evils. Sambucus and Whitney so consider it, and illustrate it with the motto,—The pure conscience is man’s laurel tree. ”

“ In everything, except in the actual pictorial device, Shakespeare exhibited himself as a skilled designer,—indeed, a writer of Emblems; he followed the very methods on which this species of literary composition was conducted, and needed only the engraver’s aid to make perfect designs.
Freest among mortals were the Emblem writers in borrowing one from the other, and from any source which might serve the construction of their ingenious devices ”

“ We say advisedly “ornamental device in books,” for infinite almost are the applications of Symbol and Emblem to Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, as is testified by the Remains of Antiquity in all parts of the world, by the Pagan tombs and Christian catacombs of ancient Rome, by nearly every temple and church and stately building in the empires of the earth, and especially in those wonderful creations of human skill in which form and colour bring forth to sight nearly every thought and fancy of our souls. ”

“ Alciat’s Emblem, from the Lyons edition of 1551, or Antwerp, 1581, number 102, has the motto which reproves men for seeking the knowledge which is beyond them: Things which are above us, are nothing to us,—they are not our concern. ”

“ Many a legend and many a strange fancy may be mixed up with it and demand almost the credulity of simplest childhood in order to obtain our credence; yet in the literature of Chivalry and Honours there are enshrined abundant records of the glory that belonged to mighty names. I recall now but one instance. In the fine folio lately emblazoned with the well-known motto “GANG FORWARD,” “I AM READY,” what volumes, to those who can interpret each mark and sign and tutored symbol, are wrapped up in the Examples of the ornamental Heraldry of the sixteenth Century: London, 1867, 1868. ”

“ It is on undoubted record that the use of Emblems, derived from German, Latin, French, and Italian sources, prevailed in England for purposes of ornamentation of various kinds; that the works of Brandt, Giovio, Symeoni, and Paradin were translated into English; and that there were several English writers or collectors of Emblems within Shakespeare’s lifetime,—as Daniell, Whitney, Willet, Combe, and Peacham.
Shakespeare possessed great artistic powers, so as to appreciate and graphically describe the beauties and qualities of excellence in painting, sculpture, and music. ”

“ We need not quote in full so familiar a narrative, and which Corrozet embellishes with twenty-four lines of French verses,—but content ourselves with a free rendering of his quatrain,—
“All clever though a man may be in various tricks of law,
Though he may think unto the end, his suit contains no flaw,
Yet up there spring forms three or four with which he hardly copes,
And lawyers’ talk and lawyers’ fees dash down his fondest hopes.” It is not, however, with such speciality that Shakespeare uses this tale respecting Hercules and the Hydra. ”

“ He who has made my portraiture wishes no other thing to be understood than this, that distrust is enclosed beneath me and that I am uncertain of reaching a safe haven;—near am I to danger, from safety ever distant: in perplexity whether to weep or to laugh,—doubtful of good or of evil, as the ship which is upon the seas tossed by the waves, is doubtful in itself where it will be borne. ”

“ Nature, indeed, forms the poet, and his storehouses of materials on which to work are the inner and outer worlds, first of his own consciousness, and next of heaven and earth spread before him. But as a portion of this latter world we may name the appliances and results of artistic skill in its delineations of outward forms, and in the fixedness which it gives to many of the conceptions of the mind. ”

“ Discord as one of the great causes of confusion is also spoken of with much force (1 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 1, l. 188, vol. v. p. 68) ,—
“No simple man that sees
This jarring discord of nobility,
This should’ring of each other in the court,
This factious bandying of their favourites,
But that he doth presage some ill event.
’Tis much, when sceptres are in children’s hands;
But more when envy breeds unkind division;
There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.” The Paris edition of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphics, 1551, subjoins several to which there is no Greek text (pp. 217–223) . ”

“ A proverb, a fable, an old world deity is set forth by the pencil and the graving tool, and the combination supplies additional elements of reflection. Thus, doubtless, did Shakespeare use such works; and not merely are some of his thoughts and expressions in unison with them, but moulded and modified by them.
For much indeed of his mythological lore he was indebted to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or, rather, I should say, to “Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated out of Latin in English metre by Arthur Golding, gent. A worke very pleasaunt and delectable; 4to London 1565.” ”

“ Fall asleep, or hearing die.” How splendidly does the dramatic poet’s genius here shine forth! It pours light upon each Emblem, and calls into day the hidden glories. His spirit breathes upon a dead picture, and rivalling Orpheus himself, he makes the images breathe and glance and live.
The mythic tale of Actæon transformed into a stag, and hunted by hounds because of his rudeness to Diana and her nymphs, was used to point the moral of widely different subjects. ”

“ And for a poet of no great depth of pure learning, but of unsurpassed natural power and genius, like Shakespeare, no class of books would attract his attention and furnish him with ideas and suggestions so readily as the Emblem writers of the Latin and Teutonic races. ”

“ And right glad am I to observe that I have had precursors in my labours, and companions in my researches; and that, in addition to Francis Douce, writers of such repute as Langlois of Rouen, Charles Knight, Noel Humphreys, and Dr. Alfred Woltmann, of Berlin, have, each by an example or two, shown how, with admirable skill and yet with evident appropriation, our great Dramatist has interwoven among his own the materials which he had gathered from Emblem writers as their source. ”

“ 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 ”