CHAPTER V.
SIX DIRECT REFERENCES IN THE PERICLES TO BOOKS OF EMBLEMS, SOME OF THEIR DEVICES DESCRIBED, AND OF THEIR MOTTOES QUOTED.
SHAKESPEARE’S name, in three quarto editions, published during his lifetime, appears as author of the play of _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_; and if a decision be made that the authorship belongs to him, and that in the main the work was his composition, then our previous conjectures are changed into certainties, and we can confidently declare who were the Emblem writers he refers to, and can exhibit the very passages from their books which he has copied and adopted.
The early folio editions of the plays, those of 1623 and 1632, omit the _Pericles_ altogether, but later editions restore it to a place among the works of Shakespeare. Dr. Farmer contends that the hand of the great dramatist is visible only in the last act; but others controvert this opinion, and maintain, though he was not the fabricator of the plot, nor the author of every dialogue and chorus, that his genius is evident in several passages.
In Knight’s _Pictorial Shakspere_, supplemental volume, p. 13, we are informed: “The first edition of _Pericles_ appeared in 1609,”—several years before the dramatist’s death,—“under the following title,—‘The late and much admired play, called _Pericles, Prince of Tyre, &c._ By William Shakespeare: London, Glosson, 1609.’”
According to the Cambridge editors, vol. ix. p. i, Preface, “another edition was issued in the same year.” The publication was repeated in 1611, 1619, 1630 and 1635, so that at the very time when Shakespeare was living, his authorship was set forth; and after his death, while his friends and contemporaries were alive, the opinion still prevailed.
The conclusion at which Knight arrives, sup. vol. pp. 118, 119, is thus stated by him: “We advocate the belief that _Pyrocles_, or _Pericles_ was a very early work of Shakspere in some form, however different from that which we possess.” And again, “We think that the _Pericles_ of the beginning of the seventeenth century was the revival of a play written by Shakspere some twenty years earlier.... Let us accept Dryden’s opinion, that
“‘Shakespeare’s own Muse his Pericles first bore.’”
The Cambridge editors, vol. ix. p. 10, ed. 1866, gave a firmer judgment:—“There can be no doubt that the hand of Shakespeare is traceable in many of the scenes, and that throughout the play he largely retouched, and even rewrote, the work of some inferior dramatist. But the text has come down to us in so maimed and imperfect a state that we can no more judge of what the play was when it left the master’s hand than we should have been able to judge of _Romeo and Juliet_, if we had only had the first quarto as authority for the text.”
Our own Hallam tells us,—“_Pericles_ is generally reckoned to be in part, and only in part, the work of Shakespeare:” but with great confidence the critic Schlegel declares,—“This piece was acknowledged to be a work, but a youthful work of Shakespeare’s. It is most undoubtedly his, and it has been admitted into several later editions of his works. The supposed imperfections originate in the circumstance that Shakespeare here handled a childish and extravagant romance of the old poet Gower, and was unwilling to drag the subject out of its proper sphere. Hence he even introduces Gower himself, and makes him deliver a prologue in his own antiquated language and versification. This power of assuming so foreign a manner is at least no proof of helplessness.”
There are, then, strong probabilities that in the main the _Pericles_ was Shakespeare’s own composition, or at least was adopted by him; it belongs to his early dramatic life, and at any rate it may be taken as evidence to show that the Emblem writers were known and made use of between 1589 and 1609 by the dramatists of England.
Books of Emblems are not indeed mentioned by their titles, nor so quoted in the _Pericles_ as we are accustomed to do, by making direct references; they were a kind of common property, on which everyone might pasture his Pegasus or his Mule without any obligation to tell where his charger had been grazing. The allusions, however, are so plain, the words so exactly alike, that they cannot be misunderstood. The author was of a certainty acquainted with more than one Emblem writer, in more than one language, and Paradin, Symeoni, and our own Whitney may be recognised in his pages. We conclude that he had them before him, and copied from them when he penned the second scene of the Second Act of _Pericles_.
The Dialogue is between Simonides, king of Pentapolis, and his daughter, Thaisa, on occasion of the “triumph,” or festive pageantry, which was held in honour of her birthday. (_Pericles_, act. ii. sc. 2, lines 17–47, vol. ix. pp. 343, 344.)
“_Enter a_ Knight; _he passes over, and his_ Squire _presents his shield to the_ Princess. _Sim._ Who is the first that doth prefer himself? _Thai._ A knight of Sparta, my renowned father; And the device he bears upon his shield Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun; The word, ‘Lux tua vita mihi.’
_Sim._ He loves you well that holds his life of you. [_The_ Second Knight _passes_. Who is the second that presents himself? _Thai._ A prince of Macedon, my royal father; And the device he bears upon his shield Is an arm’d knight that’s conquer’d by a lady; The motto thus, in Spanish, ‘Piu por dulzura que por fuerza.’ [_The_ Third Knight _passes_. _Sim._ And what’s the third? _Thai._ The third of Antioch; And his device, a wreath of chivalry; The word, ‘Me pompæ provexit apex.’ [_The_ Fourth Knight _passes_. _Sim._ What is the fourth? _Thai._ A burning torch that’s turned upside down; The word, ‘Quod me alit, me extinguit.’ _Sim._ Which shows that beauty hath his power and will, Which can as well inflame as it can kill. [_The_ Fifth Knight _passes_. _Thai._ The fifth, an hand environed with clouds, Holding out gold that’s by the touchstone tried; The motto thus, ‘Sic spectanda fides.’ [_The_ Sixth Knight _passes_. _Sim._ And what’s The sixth and last, the which the knight himself With such a graceful courtesy deliver’d? _Thai._ He seems to be a stranger; but his present is A wither’d branch, that’s only green at top; The motto, ‘In hac spe vivo.’ _Sim._ A pretty moral; From the dejected state wherein he is, He hopes by you his fortunes yet may flourish.”
As with the ornaments “in silk and gold,” which Mary Queen of Scotland worked on the bed of her son James, or with those in “the lady’s closet” at Hawsted, we trace them up to their originals, and pronounce them, however modified, to be derived from the Emblem-books of their age; so, with respect to the devices which the six knights bore on their shields, we conclude that these have their sources in books of the same character, or in the genius of the author who knew so well how to contrive and how to execute. Emblems beyond a doubt they are, though not engraved on our author’s page, as they were on the escutcheons of the knightly company. Take the device and motto of the gnats or butterflies and the candle; we trace them from Vænius, Camerarius, and Whitney, to Paradin, from Paradin to Symeoni, and from Symeoni to Giles Corrozet,—at every step we pronounce them Emblems,—and should pass the same judgment, though we could not trace them at all. It is the same with these devices in the Triumph Scene of _Pericles_; we discover the origin of some of them in Emblem works of, or before Shakespeare’s era,—and where we fail to discover, there we attribute invention, invention guided and perfected by masters in the art of fashioning pictures to portray thoughts by means of things. We will, however, in due order consider the devices and mottoes of these six knights who came to honour the king’s daughter.
The first knight is the Knight of Sparta,—
“And the device he bears upon his shield Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun; The word, _Lux tua vita mihi_.”