Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Bas. I, the aforesaid Basilisco-Knight, good fellow, Knight, Knight—
Pist. Knave, good fellow, Knave, Knave-etc.

When Shakespeare placed the following words on the lips of the Prince of Morocco (Merch. of Ven., II, 1, 24):

[ocr errors][merged small]

That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince

That won three fields of Sultan Solyman,

he probably had in mind a passage from Soliman and Perseda, I, 111, 51ff., where the Turkish general brags:

Against the Sophy in three pitched fields,
Under the conduct of great Soliman,
Have I been chiefe commaunder of an host,

And put the flint heart Perseans to the sword.

In 'Soliman and Perseda' a fatal carcanet or necklace plays an important role. This chain-as Malone suggests, very plausibly-may have been in the poet's mind, when composing Othello. Compare, for example, Act III, IV, 55 ff.:

[blocks in formation]

with the following passage from 'Soliman and Perseda', Act I, 11, 32:

[merged small][ocr errors]

My Grandame on her death bed gave it me,
And there, ev'n there, I vow'd unto myselfe

To keepe the same, untill my wandring eye
Should finde a harbour for my hart to dwell.

Cinthio, from whom the plot of 'Othello' is taken, merely states that the handkerchief was presented to Disdemona by the Moor. (Furness, Othello, p. 220.)

JOHN LYLY.

Shakespeare also sat at the feet of 'eloquent and wittie'' Lyly, the writer of the best early comedies.

1 Meres, Palladis Tamia, 1598, New Shaksp. Soc., Series IV, 1, p. 161.

Lyly's brisk and witty dialogue, his fondness for conceits and puns, his use of prose as the vehicle for comedy, his graceful, elegant, and polished style, his skilful dramatic technique, his farcical scenes, his wit-combats among ladies and courtiers,-all this was imitated and seized upon by his alert disciple. Lyly's women, refined, witty, laughing, loving, or reserved, are the prototypes of many of Shakespeare's female characters. The idea of disguising girls as boys and the consequent mistaken identities were imitated by the greater poet. In Lyly's servants we discover the germ of some Shakespearean fools and clowns. Launce and Speed, for example, in The Two Gentlemen have much affinity with Licio and Petulus in 'Midas'. Lyly's mischievous little Cupido in 'Gallathea' and in 'Sapho and Phao' is Puck's forerunner. Dogberry and Verges of Much Ado have been compared with the watchmen of Endimion. Lastly, Lyly's fairies re-appear, in more beautiful garb, on Shakespeare's stage.

Shakespeare's first comedy, Love's Labour's Lost, is in direct imitation of Lyly's comedies, with which it shares the love-intrigue, the courtly atmosphere, covert allusions to court incidents, the skirmishes of wit, and the light vein. Armado and Moth have an unmistakeable resemblance to Sir Tophas and his page, in Endimion; while the Princess and her companions are as hard to please as Cynthia, but as sprightly and full of banter as many of Lyly's women and girls. The scene in Gallathea (III, 1) where Diana's nymphs, 'entering one by one, confess their broken vow and agree to pursue 'their passion, has often been quoted as the original of that between 'the four anchorites, which is dramatically the best in Love's Labour's 'Lost' (Bond).1

The following detailed resemblances are worth noticing:

ENDIMION.

The fairies, who, in The Merry Wives, V, v, pinch Falstaff while they sing:

1 Compare Brandl, "Shakspere" p. 44.

Love's Labour's Lost has often been designated a Tendenz-drama, a précieuses ridicules' of those days, written with the purpose of ridiculing 'four chief 'affectations in speech'. I cannot accept this view. Shakespeare does, I admit without hesitation, mock extravagances of style, but only incidentally. I am of the opinion that Johannes factotum, who had written the earliest tragedies and histories in distinct imitation of Kyd and Marlowe, did no more than follow Lyly as his model, in Love's Labour's Lost. The taffeta phrases which Biron renounces in Act V, 1, 406, refer to the affected language he used as a wooer (Comp. V, II, 34 ff. and 787-794).

Pinch him, fairies mutually; :

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about....

are following the example of the fairies of 'Endimion' (IV, 1), who punish Corsites in the same manner, while singing:

Pinch him, pinch him, blacke and blue,...

Pinch him blue.

And pinch him blacke, etc.

Compare also similar verses, The First Song, in Endimion, III, 111. Note, that both of the 'pinch'-songs are in the four-beat measure.

CAMPASPE.

Of the following passage in Campaspe, II, 11, 35 ff.:

Is the warlike sound of drumme and trumpe turned to the soft noyse of lire and lute? the neighing of barbed steeds, whose loudnes filled the ayre with terrour, and whose breathes dimmed the sunne with smoak, converted to dilicate tunes and amorous glaunces, etc?

we have an apparent reminiscence in Richard III., Act I, 1, 7ff.:— Gloucester: Our stern alarums [are] changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass

The following lines in Cymbeline, II, 111, 21:
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings
And Phoebus 'gins arise..

seem to echo Campaspe, V, 1, 37 ff. :

....

the Larke so shrill and cleare;

How at heavens gats she claps her wings,
The Morne not waking till shee sings.
Heark, heark,

Compare, too, Sonnet XXIX:

....

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.

Again, Campaspe, III, 11, 37-8:

.. for thy dull head will bee but a grindstone for my quick wit, which if thou whet with overth warts, periisti

was perhaps in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote As You Like It, I, II, 57-9:

[Nature] hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.

In Act III, sc. v, 37, of 'Campaspe' Apelles, enamoured of the heroine of the play, on whom Alexander the Great has cast his eye, exclaims:

starres are to be looked at, not reched at.

Similarly, the duke of Milan, in 'The Two Gentlemen', III, 1, 156, who is desirous of giving his daughter to the rich Thurio, addressing Valentine, the rival lover, says:

Wilt thou reach stars, because they shine on thee?1

MOTHER BOMBIE.

In Act IV, 11, 28, the half-witted Silena mistaking Accius for a stool, says:

I crie you mercy, I tooke you for a ioynd stoole.

The same mistake and the same apology is made by the Fool in King Lear, III, VI, 54. Compare, too, The Shrew, II, 1, 199.

In Act I, III, of 'Mother Bombie' Candius has a stolen rendez-vous with Livia, whom he teaches the art to love:

Livia: What booke is that?

Cand. A fine pleasant poet, who entreateth of the art of Love, and of the remedie.

Candius then quotes apposite verses from Ovid's Ars Amatoria. Similarly, Lucentio, in The Shrew reads "the Art to Love" with Bianca and quotes and construes Ovid.

THE WOMAN IN THE MOON.

Puck's apology to the public, in the Epilogue to Mids. N. Dream:

1 But the same thought occurs in Greene's Pandosto, 1588 (see Furness, XI, p. 342): “starres are to be looked at with the eye, not reacht at with the hande." Compare Goethe's lines in his exquisite poem, beginning 'Wie kommt's, dass du so traurig bist':

Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht,

Man freut sich ihrer Pracht.

Mrs. v. Koenen drew my attention to this.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.

is anticipated in Lyly's Prologue to 'The Woman in the Moon': If many faults escape in her discourse,

Remember all is but a Poets dreame.

Compare also the Prologue before Sapho and Phao.

Many more correspondences between Lyly and Shakespeare (some of which are doubtful) are pointed out by Mr. Bond, in his edition.

The influence of the remaining dramatists is less marked and generally eludes precise measurement. The following, of whom we find more or less clear traces in Shakespeare, require special mention.

GEORGE PEELE.

The following words, placed on the lips of ranting Pistol, in 2. Henry IV, Act II, iv, 193:

Then feed, and be fat, my fair Calipolis,

allude burlesquingly to a scene in Peele's BATTLE OF ALCAZAR (Act II, sc. 111), where Muly Mahamet, presenting a piece of 'lion's flesh' on the point of his sword to his wife, says:

Feed, then, and faint not, fair Calipolis

and again, v, 101:

(vv. 81 and 94)—

Feed and be fat, that we may meet the foe.

The following verses at the end of the next following scene of Peele's play:

Saint George for England! and Ireland now adieu,
For here Tom Stukeley shapes his course anew—

are closely paralleled in King Lear, I, 1, 188:

Pistol's

I,

Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;
He'll shape his old course in a country new.1

Have we not Hiren here?

On the Moor's exclamation in Alcazar (Act V, sc. 1): "A horse! a horse, “villain, a horse”, see Dr. Churchill's excellent observation in 'Richard III. up to Shakespeare', (forming the 10th volume of 'Palaestra'. Berlin, 1900).

« AnteriorContinuar »