INTRODUCTION 'Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, and Pettie's Guazzo (Bk. ш. 113) reads: 'for our Galen sayth, The disquiet of the minde breedeth the disease of the bodye: and that he hath cured many diseases by bringing the pulses into good temper, and by quieting the minde.' Where did the author of Hamlet find this learned medical opinion but in the Civile Conversation? In connection with the same scene, one of the speakers (in Bk. iv. 164) says: The superfluous and disordinate ' appetite which doth in a manner burne, and consume many men to nothing . . . and so oftentimes make us 'fall into that pittifull misfortune, that on a time befell 'to waxe, which being greatlie troubled to see her selfe 'soft and melted with heat, perceiving brickes and tiles 'to be hardned and baked in the fire, cast it selfe into the 'hot furnace, where it was melted to nothing in the end.' Shakespeare would seem to have remembered this passage when making Hamlet say to his mother: 'Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, (III. iv. 82 sqq.) It is noteworthy that a similar train of thought is used by Mrs. Ford in The Merry Wives: I think the best ' way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire ' of lust have melted him in his own grease' (11. i. 67). 2 Henry IV. INTRO In 2 Henry IV., when the disguised Prince sees the aged DUCTION Falstaff making love to Doll Tearsheet, he exclaims to Poins: Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says the almanack to that?' (11. iv. 286). Where but in the Civile Conversation did the author come by this astronomical sentiment? Pettie's words And as Venus and Saturne are at continual warre 'the one with the other, so the old coupled with the yong, 'never agree together' (Bk. III. 5). are: : Falstaff himself too, in his moments of philosophical reflection, seems as it were to have dipped into the same volume: 'It is certain,' he says, that either wise bearing, or ignorant carriage, is caught as men take diseases one of another therefore let men take heed of their company' (v. i. 84)—for Pettie had already written: yet I will say further that it is true, that as some diseases of the 'body are infectious, so the vices of the mind take from one to another, so that a drunkard draweth his companions to love wine, a Carpet knight corrupteth and 'effeminateth a valiant man: and so much force hath con'tinual conversation, that oft times against our wils, we 'imitate the vices of others' (Bk. 1. 44). Henry V. In Henry V. III. v., the Constable asks: Where have they this mettle? as good and is pure and subtill, INTRO DUCTION. so there are founde dull and grosse heads where the ayre is foggie and thicke' (Bk. 1. 64). 'The Gordian knot' is found here (1. i. 46), and also in Cymbeline. It was a rarely used phrase at the time, the New English Dictionary giving one example only before Shakespeare, and quoted from a work not likely to have been read by him. Pettie has the phrase: and so long as the bonde of brotherhood is knit in such sort, it may wel 6 'be sayd that the sword which undid Gordians knot, shal 'not be able to undoo it' (Bk. 111. 89). 1 Henry VI. 6 Suffolk says: 'So worthless peasants bargain for their wives, (v. v. 53.) And in quite the same spirit one of the speakers in the Civile Conversation remarks: Fyrste, wee are to reproove the abuse of men, who in choosing a Wife, use no other order then they doe in buying a Horse, for the buyer will bee sure to prye into everye parte, whether hee bee 'sounde of winde, and limme . . . (Bk. 11. 14). 2 Henry VI. The Duchess of Gloucester thus addresses the King: 'Good king, look to 't in time; Though in this place most master wear no breeches, The same phrase is repeated in 3 Henry VI. v. v. 24, That you might still have worn the petticoat, while the Civile Conversation contains the following: Again, in Act 111. i. 170 we have 'A staff is quickly found to beat a dog,' of which Hart, with all his knowledge of the literature of the time, tells us (Arden edition, note), 'I have only one earlier example, from Udall's Diotrephes, 1588.' I can hardly think that this was a likely place for Shakespeare to find the proverbial phrase, and prefer to believe that he met with it in Pettie's work, where he might have read it twice: 'It is an easie matter to finde a staffe to beate a dog' (Bk. 11. 50); and again, A staffe is sone found to beate a dog' (Bk. iv. 120); the latter example being all but identical with Shakespeare's wording. In the next act (Iv. vii. 80), Lord Say, answering Cade, speaks as follows: Great men have reaching hands: oft have I struck And here is what seems to me to have been its origin : ANNIB. Those which dare abuse Princes seeme never to ⚫ have read that verse, 'Knowest not, that Princes hands will reach a great way of. INTRODUCTION INTRO 'devine power, being able to pull downe the mighty and DUCTION to set up the weake' (Bk. п. 199-200). 6 Professor Bond suggests that Shakespeare borrowed here from Lyly's Euphues: Knowest thou not Euphues that kings have long armes and rulers large reches' [or reaches] (vol. i. 221, 35), but the words which accompany the verse in Pettie's translation, coupled with the other borrowings already mentioned, would seem to refute the suggestion. At Act v. i. 36, Shakespeare makes mention of Atlas for the first and only time: Thou art no Atlas for so great a weight.' If the illustration came to him from reading a book in which he must have been interested, he probably derived it from Pettie's description: the shoulders of Atlas wherewith he staied up heaven' (Bk. 1. 49). It is true that Nashe mentions Atlas, and his upholding heaven, earlier than the date at which 2 Henry VI. was written; but inasmuch as Shakespeare does not appear to have borrowed to any great extent from Nashe, we may fairly conclude that it was George Pettie who was his informant here. In Act v. i. 100 are the lines: 'Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, Is able with the change to kill and cure.' There is little evidence, however, of any widespread knowledge of the myth in or about the time the play was composed (1591-92), except what Pettie's Guazzo supplies : You have in your hands the weapons of Achilles, with 'the which you both wound and heale': (Bk. 1. 17). It is true that Malone, hesitatingly supported by Hart, |