' delicate meates you have made mee taste I hope it INTRO' will please you to morrowe to close up my stomacke with that Collation or Banquet whiche you have alreadye promised mee' (Bk. ш. 112). The Tempest. There is a passage of much difficulty here. Ferdinand enters bearing a log,' and soliloquises : There be some sports are painful, and their labour Delight in them sets off: . . This my mean task Would be as heavy to me, as odious; but The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead, I forget: my labours, Multitudinous corrections have been made in the First Folio reading of the last line, which is as here printed, save that least takes the place of its very common variant lest. A simple explanation of the sentence containing this puzzling phrase is found by taking most busy as busiest-no very violent assumption-and then the whole sentence comes to this: 'I forget (my toils): But these sweet thoughts actually give new freshness to my efforts, (which are) less than ever busiest when I am engaged on them.' = The whole of the above extract comes so close, both in idea and expression, to what we read in the Civile Con versation, that one may fairly suggest there has been some borrowing here on Shakespeare's part: "Though this honest leasure [which is due to one after work] serve to take away the care of the minde a man must DUCTION INTRO- whet his wits in suche sorte, that in steede of taking his ease, affaired. . . . You make me heere remember our peasants of Timon of Athens. 'VARRO'S SERVANT. How dost, fool? APEMANTUS. Dost dialogue with thy shadow ? (11. ii. 51 sq.) With which compare Anniball's remarks, when discussing the advantages of conversation over the evils of solitariness: Which, one Crates rightly signified, who 'seeing a young man walke in a secrete place, asked him what hee did there so alone: the young man answered, 'that he talked with him selfe: I pray you (saieth hee) 'take heede you talke not with some naughtie fellow' (Bk. 1. 46). Again, in the same scene (line 228) Timon says: And nature, as it grows again toward earth, Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy.' While Anniball, advising old men, says they should not behave themselves youthfully in their age, ... but rather to give themselves to consider that age naturally 'maketh them crooked and stooping towardes the grounde, 'to the ende they may thinke to returne from whence they INTRO'came' (Bk. 11. 174). Another passage from Pettie reads: there is bargayn'ing for all thinges, whiche are fit to heale the diseases of 'povertie, and to get the health of riches' (Bk. 11. 118). If Shakespeare caught this idea from the Civile Conversation, he has transmuted it in his noblest way: ' and his poor self, A dedicated beggar to the air, With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, DUCTION Walks, like contempt, alone.' Titus Andronicus. (Iv. ii. 12-15.) 6 And faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus.' (II. i. 16.) But, seven years at least before these lines were written, Pettie's translation contained the following: And if we consider diligently the fable of Prometheus, Jupiter's 'Ambassador upon the Mount Caucasus, and his heart 'torne by the Egle . . .' (Bk. 1. 49). It is possible, of course, that Shakespeare may have carried with him from school many such scraps of mythology; but it may also be that his reading of the Civile Conversation stirred his memory to a more distinct recollection of what he had once known. Twelfth Night. It is William Guazzo who, when discussing the artful way to trimme up our speech, and to goe an ace beyonde the common sort,' says: "We must not then blame the diligent industry of some, who like unto Bees, gather hony of divers flowers and not suffering one word, INTRO-sentence, or mery jest, spoken by others, to fall to the DUCTION ground, write them in their tables, to the intent to use 'them themselves afterwardes eyther in speaking or writing' (Bk. 11. 137). And this is the very course taken by Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night (111. i. 102) when, lost in admiration of the courtly language which Viola addresses to the Lady Olivia, he exclaims: "Odours," "pregnant," and "vouchsafed": I'll get "'em all three all ready,' and proceeds to jot them down in his table-book. Where else but in Pettie's volume did Shakespeare find so excellent a model for his Illyrian prince of simpletons ? 6 Shakespeare shows a strong partiality for the use of the word 'map' in figurative description of a simple kind : "Thou map of honour'; Thou map of woe'; 'I see, as in a map, the end of all,' are instances. On one occasion, however, he rises to greater heights, when in Twelfth Night he makes Maria say: he does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies (III. ii. 80-2). The source from whence the idea was derived is, I think, unmistakably a passage in the Civile Conversation, where one of the speakers, in describing the extraordinary head adornments of some fashionably dressed women whom he had lately seen, ends by saying: 'I rehearse not unto you a thousand other trifles, which dimmed and dazeled mine eyes, in such sort as ' certaine Mappes doe, wherein are drawne foorth in small figures, the squadrons of horse menne, the troupes of 'foote menne, and the number of the pieces of artillery' (Bk. 111. 34). Troilus and Cressida. A passage in the play refers to Milo, the strong man. It is the only time he is mentioned in Shakespeare. Ulysses is the speaker, and in praise of Ajax says: ' and for thy vigour, Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield (11. iii. 258.) Shakespeare Craig, usually a very careful critic, says: The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In Act 11. Sc. i. 145, Speed says, ironically: 'O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face'; and in quite the same way Pettie remarks: the simple 'soules not perceiving that this their transformation or 'rather deformation is no more seene then a nose in a mans face' (Bk. 11. 173). Then later: 'SPEED. Item, She is slow in words. LAUNCE. O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue: I pray thee, out with 't, and place it for her chief virtue.' (III. i. 338.) INTRODUCTION |