act ii. sc. 4, lines 68–74, 81–85, 87–91, vol. ix. pp. 207, 208, where
the poet describes the adornments of Imogen’s chamber:—
“It was hang’d With tapestry of silk and silver; the story Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman, And Cydnus swell’d above the banks, or for The press of boats, or pride: a piece of work So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive In workmanship and value. . . . . . And the chimney-piece Chaste Dian, bathing:[70] never saw I figures So likely to report themselves: the cutter Was as another nature, dumb; outwent her, Motion and breath left out. . . . . . . The roof o’ the chamber With golden cherubins is fretted: her andirons— I had forgot them—were two winking Cupids Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely Depending on their brands.”
So, in the _Taming of the Shrew_, act ii. sc. 1, lines 338–348, vol. iii. p. 45, Gremio enumerates the furniture of his house in Padua:—
“First, as you know, my house within the city Is richly furnished with plate and gold; Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands; My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry; In ivory coffers I have stuff’d my crowns; In cypress chests my arras counterpoints, Costly apparel, tents, and canopies, Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss’d with pearl, Valance of Venice gold in needlework, Pewter and brass and all things that belong To house or housekeeping.”
And Hamlet, when he contrasts his father and his uncle, act iii. sc. 4, lines 55–62, vol. viii. p. 111, what a force of artistic skill does he not display! It is indeed a poet’s description, but it has all the power and reality of a most finished picture. The very form and features are presented, as if some limner, a perfect master of his pencil, had portrayed and coloured them:—
“See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man.”
In the _Merchant of Venice_, too, act iii. sc. 2, lines 115–128, vol. ii. p. 328, when Bassanio opens the leaden casket and discovers the portrait of Portia, who but one endowed with a painter’s inspiration could speak of it as Shakespeare does!—
“Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, Seem they in motion? Here are sever’d lips, Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs The painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men, Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes,— How could he see to do them? Having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his And leave itself unfurnish’d.”
Such power of estimating artistic skill authorises the supposition that Shakespeare himself had made the painter’s art a subject of more than accidental study; else whence such expressions as those which in the _Antony_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 201–209, vol. ix. p. 38, are applied to Cleopatra?—
“For her own person. It beggar’d all description: she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O’er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.”
Or, even when sportively, in _Twelfth Night_, act i. sc. 5, lines 214–230, vol. iii. p. 240, Olivia replies to Viola’s request, “Good Madam, let me see your face,”—is it not quite in an artist’s or an amateur’s style that the answer is given? “We will draw the curtain and show you the picture. Look you, sir, such a one I was this present: is’t not well done?” [_Unveiling_.
“_Viol._ Excellently done, if God did all. _Oli._ ’Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather. _Vio._ ’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on: Lady, you are the cruel’st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy.
_Oli._ O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to my will: as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth.”
But from certain lines in the _Taming of the Shrew_ (Induction, sc. 2, lines 47–58), it is evident that Shakespeare had seen either some of the mythological pictures by Titian, or engravings from them, or from similar subjects. Born in 1477, and dying in 1576, in his ninety-ninth year, the great Italian artist was contemporary with a long series of illustrious men, and his fame and works had shone far beyond their native sky. Our distant and then but partially civilised England awoke to a perception of their beauties, and though few—if any—of Titian’s paintings so early found a domicile in this country, yet pictures were, we are assured,[71] “a frequent decoration in the rooms of the wealthy.” Shakespeare even represents the Countess of Auvergne, _1 Henry VI._, act ii. sc. 3, lines 36, 37, vol. v. p. 33, as saying to Talbot,—
“Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me, For in my gallery thy picture hangs.”
The formation of a royal gallery, or collection of paintings, had engaged the care of Henry VIII.; and the British nobility at the time of his daughter Elizabeth’s reign, “deeply read in classical learning, familiar with the literature of Italy, and polished by foreign travel,” “were well qualified to appreciate and cultivate the true principles of taste.”
Titian, as is well known, “displayed a singular mastery in the representation of nude womanly forms, and in this the witchery of his colouring is manifested with fullest power.”[72] Many instances of this are to be found in his works. Two are presented by the renowned Venus-figures at Florence, and by the beautiful Danae at Naples. The Cambridge gallery contains the Venus in whose form the Princess Eboli is said to have been portrayed, playing the lute, and having Philip of Spain seated at her side. In the Bridgewater gallery are two representations of Diana in the bath,—the one having the story of Actæon, and the other discovering the guilt of Calisto; and in the National Gallery are a Bacchus and Ariadne, and also a good copy, from the original at Madrid, of Venus striving to hold back Adonis from the chase. To these we may add the Arming of Cupid, in the Borghese palace at Rome, in which he quietly permits Venus to bind his eyes, while another Cupid whispering leans on her shoulder, and two Graces bring forward quivers and bows.
It is to such a School of Painting, or to such a master of his art, that Shakespeare alludes, when, in the Induction scene to the _Taming of the Shrew_, Christopher Sly is served and waited on as a lord:—
_Sec. Serv._ Dost thou love pictures? we will fetch thee straight Adonis painted by a running brook. And Cytherea all in sedges hid, Which seem to move and wanton with her breath, Even as the waving sedges play with wind. _Lord._ We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid, And how she was beguiled and surprised, As lively painted as the deed was done. _Third Serv._ Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood, Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds, And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep, So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.”
Among Shakespeare’s gifts was also the power to appreciate the charms of melody and song. Their influence he felt, and their effect he most eloquently describes. He speaks of them with a sweetness, a gentleness, and force which must have had counterparts in his own nature. As in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, act ii. sc. 1, line 148, vol. ii. p. 215, when Oberon bids Puck to come to her,—
“Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.”
And again, in the _Merchant of Venice_, act v. sc. 1, lines 2 and 54, vol. ii. p. 360, how exquisite the description!—
“When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise.”
Lorenzo’s discourse to Jessica is such as only a passion-warmed genius could conceive and utter:—
“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls.”
And Ferdinand, in the _Tempest_, act i. sc. 2, l. 387, vol. i, p. 20, after listening to Ariel’s song, “Come unto these yellow sands,” thus testifies to its power:—
“Where should this music be? i’ th’ air, or th’ earth? It sounds no more: and sure it waits upon Some god o’ th’ island. Sitting on a bank, Weeping again the king my father’s wreck, This music crept by me upon the waters Allaying both their fury and my passion With its sweet air: thence have I follow’d it, Or it hath drawn me rather.”
Thus, from his sufficient command over the requisite languages, from his diligent reading in the literature of his country, translated as well as original, from his opportunities of frequent converse with the cultivated minds of his age, and still more from what we have shown him to have possessed,—accurate taste and both an intelligent and a warm appreciation of the principles and beauties of Imitative Art,—we conclude that Shakespeare found it a study congenial to his spirit and powers, to examine and apply, what was both popular and learned in its day,—the illustrations, by the graver’s art and the poet’s pen, of the proverbial wisdom which constitutes almost the essence of the Emblematical writers of the sixteenth century. To him, as to others, their works would be sources of interest and amusement; and even in hours of idleness many a sentiment would be gathered up to be afterwards almost unconsciously assimilated for the mind’s nurture and growth.
When we maintain that Shakespeare not unfrequently made use of the Emblem writers, we do not mean to imply that he was generally a direct copyist from them. This is seldom the case. But a word, a phrase, or an allusion, sufficiently demonstrates whence particular thoughts have been derived, and how they have been coloured and clothed. They have been gathered as flowers in a country-walk are gathered—one from this hedge-side, another from that, and a third from among the standing corn, and others from the margin of some murmuring stream; but all have their natural beauty heightened by the skill with which they are blended so as to impart gracefulness to the whole. Flora’s gems they may be, but the enwoven coronal borrows its chief charm from the artistic power and fitness with which its parts are arranged: break the thread, or cut the string with which Genius has bound them together, and they fall into inextricable confusion—a mass of disorder—no longer a pride and a joy: but let them remain, as a most excellent skill has placed them, and for ever could we gaze on their loveliness. A matchless beauty has been achieved, and all the more do we value it, because upon it there is also stamped eternal youth.
Footnote 64:
We select an instance common to both Holbein and Shakespeare; it is pointed out by Woltmann, in his _Holbein and his Time_, vol. ii. p. 23, where, speaking of the Holbein painting, _The Death of Lucretia_, the writer says,—“The costume is here, as ever, that of Holbein’s own time. The painter reminds us of Shakespeare, who also conceived the heroes of classic antiquity in the costume of his own days; in the _Julius Cæsar_ the troops are drawn up by beat of drum, and Coriolanus comes forth like an English lord: but the historical signification of the subject nevertheless does in a degree become understood, which the later poetry, with every instrument of archæological learning, troubles itself in vain to reach.”
It may be noted that in other instances both Wornum, the English biographer of Holbein, and Woltmann, the German, compare Holbein and Shakespeare, or, rather, illustrate the one by the other.
Footnote 65:
As when Cooper, at the tomb of Shakespeare, describes it,—
“The scene then chang’d from this romantic land, To a bleak waste by bound’ry unconfin’d, Where three swart sisters of the weird band Were mutt’ring curses to the troublous wind.”
Footnote 66: