Whitney, 1586.
The Concordance to Shakespeare, by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, for thoroughness hitherto unmatched,[166] notes down eleven instances in which the Phœnix is named, and in most of them, with some epithet expressive of its nature. It is spoken of as the Arabian bird, the bird of wonder; its nest of spicery is mentioned; it is made an emblem of death, and employed in metaphor to flatter both Elizabeth and James.
Besides the instances already given (p. 236), we here select others of a general nature; as:—When on the renowned Talbot’s death in battle, Sir William Lucy, in presence of Charles, the Dauphin, exclaims over the slain (1 Hen. VI., act iv. sc. 7, l. 92),—
his request for leave to give their bodies burial is thus met,—
And York, on the haughty summons of Northumberland and Clifford, declares (3 Hen. VI., act i. sc. 4, l. 35),—
In the Phœnix and the Turtle (lines 21 and 49, vol. ix. p. 671), are the lines,—
The “threne,” or Lamentation (l. 53, vol. ix. p. 672), then follows,—
The Maiden in The Lover’s Complaint (l. 92, vol. ix. p. 638) thus speaks of her early love,—
Some of the characteristics of the Phœnix are adduced in the dialogue, Richard III. (act iv. sc. 4, l. 418, vol. v. p. 606), between Richard III. and the queen or widow of Edward IV. The king is proposing to marry her daughter,—
Another instance is from Antony and Cleopatra (act iii. sc. 2, l. 7, vol. ix. p. 64). Agrippa and Enobarbus meet in Cæsar’s ante-chamber, and of Lepidus Enobarbus declares,—
And in Cymbeline (act i. sc. 6, l. 15, vol. ix. p. 183), on being welcomed by Imogen, Iachimo says, aside,—
But the fullest and most remarkable example is from Henry VIII. (act v. sc. 5, l. 28, vol. vi. p. 114). Cranmer assumes the gift of inspiration, and prophesies of the new-born child of the king and of Anne Bullen an increase of blessings and of all princely graces,—
There is another bird, the emblem of tranquillity and of peaceful and happy days; it is the King-fisher, which the poets have described with the utmost embellishment of the fancy. Aristotle and Pliny tell even more marvellous tales about it than Herodotus and Horapollo do about the Phœnix.
The fable, on which the poetic idea rests, is two-fold; one that Alcyone, a daughter of the wind-god Æolus, had been married to Ceyx; and so happily did they live that they gave one another the appellations of the gods, and by Jupiter in anger were changed into birds; the other narrates, that Ceyx perished from shipwreck, and that in a passion of grief Alcyone threw herself into the sea. Out of pity the gods bestowed on the two the shape and habit of birds. Ovid has greatly enlarged the fable, and has devoted to it, in his Metamorphoses (xi. 10), between three and four hundred lines. We have only to do with the conclusion,—
According to Aristotle’s description (Hist. Anim. ix. 14),—
“The nest of the Alcyon is globular, with a very narrow entrance, so that if it should be upset the water would not enter. A blow from iron has no effect upon it, but the human hand soon crushes it and reduces it to powder. The eggs are five.”
“The halcyones,” Pliny avers, “are of great name and much marked. The very seas, and they that saile thereupon, know well when they sit and breed. This bird, so notable, is little bigger than a sparrow; for the more part of her pennage, blew, intermingled yet among with white and purple feathers; having a thin small neck and long withal they lay and sit about mid-winter, when daies be shortest; and the times while they are broodie, is called the halcyon daies; for during that season the sea is calm and navigable, especially on the coast of Sicilie.”—Philemon Holland’s Plinie, x. 32.
We are thus prepared for the device which Paolo Giovio sets before his readers, with an Italian four-lined stanza to a French motto, We know well the weather. The drawing suggests that the two Alcyons in one nest are sailing “on the coast of Sicilie,” in the straits of Messina, with Scylla and Charybdis on each hand—but in perfect calmness and security,—
Giovio, 1562.
Nous ſauons bien le temps.
The festival of Saint Martin, or Martlemas, is held November 11th, at the approach of winter, and was a season of merriment and good cheer. It is in connection with this festival that Shakespeare first introduces a mention of the Alcyon (1 Henry VI., act i. sc. 2, l. 129, vol. v. p. 14). The Maid of Orleans is propounding her mission for the deliverance of France to Reignier, Duke of Anjou,—
It was, and I believe still is, an opinion prevalent in some parts of England, that a King-fisher, suspended by the tail or beak, will turn round as the wind changes. To this fancy, allusion is made in King Lear (act ii. sc. 2, l. 73, vol. viii. p. 307),—
The Poet delights to tell of self-sacrificing love; and hence the celebrity which the Pelican has acquired for the strong natural affection which impels it, so the tale runs, to pour forth the very fountain of its life in nourishment to its young. From Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in the island of Cyprus, whose Physiologvs was printed by Plantin in 1588, we have the supposed natural history of the Pelicans and their young, which he symbolizes in the Saviour. His account is accompanied by a pictorial representation, “ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΠΕΛΕΚΑΝΟΣ,”—Concerning the Pelican (p. 30).
Epiphanius, 1588.
The good bishop narrates as physiological history the following,—
“Beyond all birds the Pelican is fond of her young. The female sits on the nest, guarding her offspring, and cherishes and caresses them and wounds them with loving; and pierces their sides and they die. After three days the male pelican comes and finds them dead, and very much his heart is pained. Driven by grief he smites his own side, and as he stands over the wounds of the dead young ones, the blood trickles down, and thus are they made alive again.”
Reusner and Camerarius both adopt the Pelican as the emblem of a good king who devotes himself to the people’s welfare. For Law and for Flock, is the very appropriate motto they prefix; Camerarius simply saying (ed. 1596, p. 87),—
Reusner (bk. ii. p. 73) gives the following device,—
And tells how,—
“Alphonsus the wise and good king of Naples, with his own honoured hand painted a Pelican which with its sharp beak was laying open its breast so as with its own blood to save the lives of its young. Thus for people, for law, it is right that a king should die and by his own death restore life to the nations. As by his own death Christ did restore life to the just, and with life peace and righteousness.”
He adds this personification of the Pelican,—
The other motto, which Hadrian Junius and Geffrey Whitney select, opens out another idea, Quod in te est, prome,—“Bring forth what is in thee.” It suggests that of the soul’s wealth we should impart to others.
Junius (Emb. 7) thus addresses the bird he has chosen,—
“By often striking, O Pelican, thou layest open the deep recesses of thy breast and givest life to thy offspring. Search into thine own mind (my friend), seek what is hidden within, and bring forth into the light the seeds of thine inner powers.”
And very admirably does Whitney (p. 87) apply the sentiment to one of the most eminent of divines in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,—namely, to Dr. Alexander Nowell, the celebrated Dean of St. Paul’s, illustrious both for his learning and his example,—
The full poetry of the thoughts thus connected with the Pelican is taken in, though but briefly expressed by Shakespeare. In Hamlet (act iv. sc. 5, l. 135, vol. viii. p. 135), on Laertes determining to seek revenge for his father’s death, the king adds fuel to the flame,—
From Richard II. (act ii. sc. 1, l. 120, vol. iv. p. 140) we learn how in zeal and true loyalty John of Gaunt counsels his headstrong nephew, and how rudely the young king replies,—
The idea, indeed, almost supposes that the young pelicans strike at the breasts of the old ones, and forcibly or thoughtlessly drain their life out. So it is in King Lear (act iii. sc. 4, l. 68, vol. viii. p. 342), when the old king exclaims,—
And again (2 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 1, l. 83, vol. v. p. 182), in the words addressed to Suffolk,—
The description of the wounded stag, rehearsed to the banished duke by one of his attendants, is as touching a narrative, as full of tenderness, as any which show the Poet’s wonderful power over our feelings; it is from As You Like It (act ii. sc. 1, l. 29, vol. ii. p. 394),—
Graphic and highly ornamented though this description may be, it is really the counterpart of Gabriel Symeoni’s Emblem of love incurable. The poor stag lies wounded and helpless,—the mortal dart in his flank, and the life-stream gushing out. The scroll above bears a Spanish motto, This holds their Remedy and not I; and it serves to introduce the usual quatrain.
Giovio and Symeoni, 1562.
Eſto tiene ſu remedio, y non yo.
To the same motto and the same device Paradin (fol. 168) furnishes an explanation,—
“The device of love incurable,” he says, “may be a stag wounded by an arrow, having a branch of Dittany in its mouth, which is a herb that grows abundantly in the island of Crete. By eating this the wounded stag heals all its injuries. The motto, ‘Esto tienne su remedio, y no yo,’ follows those verses of Ovid in the Metamorphoses, where Phœbus, complaining of the love for Daphne, says, ‘Hei mihi, quòd nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.’”
The connected lines in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (bk. i. fab. 9), show that even Apollo, the god of healing, whose skill does good to all others, does no good to himself. The Emblems of Otho Vænius (p. 154) gives a very similar account to that of Symeoni,—
The following is the English version of that date,—
In the presence of those who had slain Cæsar, and over his dead body at the foot of Pompey’s statue, “which all the while ran blood,” Marc Antony poured forth his fine avowal of continued fidelity to his friend (Julius Cæsar, act iii. sc. 1, l. 205, vol. vii. p. 368),—
The same metaphor from the wounded deer is introduced in Hamlet (act iii. sc. 2, l. 259, vol. viii. p. 97). The acting of the play has had on the king’s mind the influence which Hamlet hoped for; and as in haste and confusion the royal party disperse, he recites the stanza,—
The very briefest allusion to the subject of our Emblem is also contained in the Winter’s Tale (act i. sc. 2, l. 115, vol. iii. p. 323). Leontes is discoursing with his queen Hermione,—
The poetical epithet “golden,” so frequently expressive of excellence and perfection, and applied even to qualities of the mind, is declared by Douce (vol. i. p. 84) to have been derived by Shakespeare either from Sidney’s Arcadia (bk. ii.), or from Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4to, fol. 8), where speaking of Cupid’s arrows, he says,—
This borrowing and using of the epithet “golden” might equally well, and with as much probability, have taken place through the influence of Alciat, or by adoption from Whitney’s very beautiful translation and paraphrase of Joachim Bellay’s Fable of Cupid and Death. The two were lodging together at an inn,[169] and unintentionally exchanged quivers: death’s darts were made of bone, Cupid’s were “dartes of goulde.”
The conception of the tale is admirable, and the narrative itself full of taste and beauty. Premising that the same device is employed by Whitney as by Alciat, we will first give almost a literal version from the 154th and 155th Emblems of the latter author (edition 1581),—
And carrying on the idea into the next Emblem (155),—
Whitney’s “sportive tale, concerning death and love,” possesses sufficient merit to be given in full (p. 132),—
For an interlude to our remarks on the “golden,” we must mention that the pretty tale Concerning Death and Cupid was attributed to Whitney by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries; and, if known to other literary men of the age, very reasonably may be supposed not unknown to the dramatist. Henry Peacham, in 1612, p. 172 of his Emblems, acknowledges that it was from Whitney that he derived his own tale,—
Whitney luxuriates in this epithet “golden;”—golden fleece, golden hour, golden pen, golden sentence, golden book, golden palm are found recorded in his pages. At p. 214 we have the lines,—
We may indeed regard Whitney as the prototype of Hood’s world-famous “Miss Kilmansegg, with her golden leg,”—
Shakespeare is scarcely more sparing in this respect than the Cheshire Emblematist; he mentions for us “golden tresses of the dead,” “golden oars and a silver stream,” “the glory, that in gold clasps locks in the golden story,” “a golden casket,” “a golden bed,” and “a golden mind.” Merchant of Venice (act ii. sc. 7, lines 20 and 58, vol. ii. p. 312),—
And applied direct to Cupid’s artillery in Midsummer Night’s Dream (act i. sc. 1, l. 168, vol. ii. p. 204), Hermia makes fine use of the epithet golden,—
So in Twelfth Night (act i. sc. 1, l. 33, vol. iii. p. 224), Orsino, Duke of Milan, speaks of Olivia,—
And when Helen praised the complexion or comeliness of Troilus above that of Paris, Cressida avers (Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 2, l. 100, vol. vi. p. 134),—
“I had as lief Helen’s golden tongue had commended Troilus for a copper nose.”
As Whitney’s pictorial illustration represents them, Death and Cupid are flying in mid-air, and discharging their arrows from the clouds. Confining the description to Cupid, this is exactly the action in one of the scenes of the Midsummer Night’s Dream (act ii. sc. 1, l. 155, vol. ii. p. 216). The passage was intended to flatter Queen Elizabeth; it is Oberon who speaks,—
Scarcely by possibility could a dramatist, who was also an actor, avoid the imagery of poetic ideas with which his own profession made him familiar. I am not sure if Sheridan Knowles did not escape the temptation; but if Shakespeare had done so, it would have deprived the world of some of the most forcible passages in our language. The theatre for which he wrote, and the stage on which he acted, supplied materials for his imagination to work into lines of surpassing beauty.
Boissard’s “Theatrvm Vitæ Humanæ” (edition Metz, 4to, 1596) presents its first Emblem with the title,—Human life is as a Theatre of all Miseries. (See Plate XIV.)