Chapter XVII: Section IV: Emblems Illustrative of Fables

SIMILITUDES and, in cases not a few, identities have often been detected between the popular tales of widely distant nations, intimating either a common origin, or a common inventive power to work out like results. Fables have ever been a floating literature,—borne hither and thither on the current of Time,—used by any one, and properly belonging to no one. How they have circulated from land to land, and from age to age, we cannot tell; whence they first arose it is impossible to divine. There exist, we are told, fables collected by Bidpai in Sanscrit, by Lokman in Arabic, by Æsop in Greek, and by Phædrus in Latin; and they seem to have been interchanged and borrowed one from the other as if they were the property of the world,—handed down from the ancestorial times of a remote antiquity.

Shakespeare’s general estimation of fables, and of those of Æsop in particular, may be gathered from certain expressions in two of the plays,—in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act v. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. ii. p. 258) and in _3 Henry VI_. (act v. sc. 5, l. 25, vol. v. p. 329). In the _former_ the speakers are Hippolyta and Theseus,—

“_Hip._ ’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.
_The._ More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.”

In the _latter_ Queen Margaret’s son in reproof of Gloucester, declares,—

“Let Æsop fable in a winter’s night;
His currish riddles sort not with this place.”

The year of Shakespeare’s birth, 1564, saw the publication, at Rome, of the Latin Fables of Gabriel Faerni; they had been written at the request of Pope Pius IV., and possess a high degree of excellence, both for their correct Latinity and for the power of invention which they display. Roscoe, in his _Life of Leo X._ (Bohn’s ed. ii. p. 172), even avers that they “are written with such classical purity, as to have given rise to an opinion that he had discovered and fraudulently availed himself of some of the unpublished works of Phædrus.” This opinion, however, is without any foundation.

The _Dialogues of Creatures moralised_ preceded, however, the _Fables_ of Faerni by above eighty years. “In the Latin and Dutch only there were not less than fifteen known editions before 1511.”[142] An edition in Dutch is named as early as 1480, and one in French in 1482; and the English version appeared, it is likely, at nearly as early a date. These and other books of fables, though by a contested claim, are often regarded as books of Emblems. The best Emblem writers, even the purest, introduce fables and little tales of various kinds; as _Alciat_, Emb. 7, The Image of Isis, the Ass and the Driver; Emb. 15, The Cock, the Lion, and the Church; Emb. 59, The Blackamoor washed White, &c.: _Hadrian Junius_, Emb. 4, The caged Cat and the Rats; Emb. 19, The Crocodile and her Eggs: _Perriere_, Emb. 101, Diligence, Idleness, and the Ants. They all, in fact, adopted without scruple the illustrations which suited their particular purpose; and Whitney, in one part of his _Emblemes_, uses twelve of Faerni’s fables in succession.

Of the fables to which Shakespeare alludes some have been quoted in the former part of this work;—as The Fly and the Candle; The Sun, the Wind, and the Traveller; The Elephant and the undermined Tree; The Countryman and the Serpent. Of others we now proceed to give examples.

The Hares biting the dead Lion had, perhaps, one of its earliest applications, if not its origin, in the conduct of Achilles and his coward Greeks to the dead body of Hector, which Homer thus records (_Iliad_, xxii. 37),—

“The other sons of the Greeks crowded around;
And admired Hector’s stature and splendid form;
Nor was there one standing by who did not inflict a wound.”

Claude Mignault, in his notes to Alciatus (Emb. 153), quotes an epigram, from an unknown Greek author, which Hector is supposed to have uttered as he was dragged by the Grecian chariot,—

“Now after my death ye pierce my body;
The very hares are bold to insult a dead lion.”

The _Troilus and Cressida_ (act v. sc. 8, l. 21, vol. vi. p. 259) exhibits the big, brutal Achilles exulting over his slain enemy, and giving the infamous order,—

“Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail;
Along the field I will the Trojan trail.”

And afterwards (act v. sc. 10, l. 4, vol. vi. p. 260) the atrocities are recounted to which Hector’s body was exposed,—

“He’s dead, and at the murderer’s horse’s tail
In beastly sort dragg’d through the shameful field.”

The description thus given accords with that of Alciatus, Reusner, and Whitney, in reference to the saying, “We must not struggle with phantoms.” Alciat’s stanzas (Emb. 153) are,—

Cum laruis non luctandum.

ÆACIDÆ _moriens percussu cuspidis Hector
Qui toties hosteis vicerat ante suos;
Comprimere haud potuit vocem, insultantibus illis,
Dum curru & pedibus nectere vincla parant.
Distrahite vt libitum est: sic cassi luce leonis
Conuellunt barbam vel timidi lepores_.

Thus rendered by Whitney (p. 127), with the same device,—

_Cùm laruis non luctandum._

“When Hectors force, throughe mortall wounde did faile,
And life beganne, to dreadefull deathe to yeelde:
The Greekes moste gladde, his dyinge corpes assaile,
Who late did flee before him in the fielde:
Which when he sawe, quothe hee nowe worke your spite,
For so, the hares the Lion dead doe byte.

Looke here vpon, you that doe wounde the dead,
With slaunders vile, and speeches of defame:
Or bookes procure, and libelles to be spread,
When they bee gone, for to deface theire name:
Who while they liu’de, did feare you with theire lookes,
And for theire skill, you might not beare their bookes.”

Reusner’s lines, which have considerable beauty, may thus be rendered,—

“Since man is mortal, the dead it becomes us
Neither by word nor reproachful writing to mock at.
Theseus, mindful of mortal destiny, the bones of his friends
Both laves, and stores up in the tomb, and covers with earth.
’Tis the mark of a weak mind, to wage war with phantoms,
And after death to good men insult to offer.
So when overcome by the strength of Achilles
The scullions of the camp struck Hector with darts.
So whelps bite the lion laid prostrate by death;
So his weapon any one bloods in the boar that is slain.
Better ’tis, ye gods, well to speak, of those deserving well;
And wickedness great indeed, to violate sacred tombs.”

The device itself, in these three authors, is a representation of Hares biting a dead Lion; and in this we find an origin for the words used in _King John_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 134, vol. iv. p. 17), to reprove the Archduke of Austria. Austria demands of Philip Faulconbridge, “What the devil art thou?” and Philip replies,—

“One that will play the devil, sir, with you,
An a’ may catch your hide and you alone:
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.”

Immediately references follow to other fables, or to their pictorial representations,—

“I’ll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right:”

in allusion to the fable of the fox or the ass hunting in a lion’s skin. Again (l. 141),—

“_Blanch._ O, well did he become that lion’s robe
That did disrobe the lion of that robe.

_Bast._ It lies as sightly on the back of him
As great Alcides’ shows upon an ass:”

a sentiment evidently suggested to the poet’s mind by some device or emblem in which the incongruity had found a place. Farther research might clear up this and other unexplained allusions in Shakespeare to fables or proverbs; but there is no necessity for attempting this in every instance that occurs.

“_Friendship enduring even after death_,” might receive a variety of illustrations. The conjugal relation of life frequently exemplifies its truth; and occasionally there are friends who show still more strongly how death hallows the memory of the departed, and makes survivors all the more faithful in their love. As the emblem of such fidelity and affection Alciat (Emb. 159) selects the figures of the elm and the vine.[143]

Amicitia etiam poſt mortem durans.
_EMBLEMA CLIX._

The consociation in life is not forgotten; and though the supporting tree should die, the twining plant still grasps it round and adorns it with leaves and fruit.

ARENTEM _ſenio, nudam quoque frondibus vlmum,
Complexa eſt viridi vitis opaca coma:
Agnoſcitque vices naturæ, & grata parenti
Officij; reddit mutua iura ſuo.
Exemploque monet, tales nos quærere amicos,
Quos neque disſiungat fædere summa dies._

To which lines Whitney (p. 62) gives for interpretation the two stanzas,—

“A Withered Elme, whose boughes weare bare of leaues
And sappe, was sunke with age into the roote:
A fruictefull vine, vnto her bodie cleaues,
Whose grapes did hange, from toppe vnto the foote:
And when the Elme, was rotten, drie, and dead,
His braunches still, the vine abowt it spread.

Which showes, wee shoulde be linck’de with such a frende,
That might reuiue, and helpe when wee bee oulde:
And when wee stoope, and drawe vnto our ende,
Our staggering state, to helpe for to vphoulde:
Yea, when wee shall be like a sencelesse block,
That for our sakes, will still imbrace our stock.”

The Emblems of Joachim Camerarius,—_Ex Re Herbaria_ (edition 1590, p. 36),—have a similar device and motto,—

“_Quamlibet arenti vitis tamen hæret in ulmo,
Sic quoque post mortem verus amicus amat._”

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“Yet as it pleases the vine clings to the withered elm,
So also after death the true friend loves.”

And in the Emblems of Otho Vænius (Antwerp, 1608, p. 244), four lines of Alciat being quoted, there are both English and Italian versions, to—

“_Loue after death._”

“The vyne doth still embrace the elme by age ore-past,
Which did in former tyme those feeble stalks vphold,
And constantly remaynes with it now beeing old,
Loue is not kil’d by death, that after death doth last.”

And,—

“Ne per morte muore.”

“_s’Auiticchia la vite, e l’olmo abbraccia,
Anchor che il tempo secchi le sue piante;
Nopo morte l’Amor tiensi constante.
Non teme morte Amore, anzi la scaccia._”

It is in the _Comedy of Errors_ (act ii. sc. 2, l. 167, vol. i. p. 417) that Shakespeare refers to this fable, when Adriana addresses Antipholus of Syracuse,—

“How ill agrees it with your gravity
To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!
Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt,
But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
Makes me with thy strength to communicate.”

With a change from the vine to the ivy a very similar comparison occurs in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 37, vol. ii. p. 250). The infatuated Titania addresses Bottom the weaver as her dearest joy,—

“Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies begone, and be all ways away.
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!”

The fable of the Fox and the Grapes is admirably represented in Freitag’s _Mythologia Ethica_ (p. 127), to the motto, “Feigned is the refusal of that which cannot be had,”—

Ficta eius quod haberi nequit
recuſatio.

_Fatuus ſtatim indicat iram ſuam: qui autem diſſimulat iniuriam,
callidus eſt._
_Prouerb._ 12, 16.

“A fool’s wrath is presently known: but a prudent man covereth shame.”

The fable itself belongs to an earlier work by Gabriel Faerni, and there exemplifies the thought, “to glut oneself with one’s own folly,”—

“_Stultitia sua seipsum saginare._”

“VULPES esuriens, alta de vite racemos
Pendentes nulla quum prensare arte valeret,
Nec pedibus tantum. aut agili se tollere saltu.
Re infecta abscedens, hæc secum, Age, desine, dixit.
Immatura vva est, gustuque insuavis acerbo.
Consueuere homines, eventu si qua sinistro
Vota cadunt, iis sese alienos velle videri.”

Whitney takes possession of Faerni’s fable, and gives the following translation (p. 98), though by no means a literal one,—

“The Foxe, that longe for grapes did leape in vayne,
With wearie limmes, at lengthe did sad departe:
And to him selfe quoth hee, I doe disdayne
These grapes I see, bicause their taste is tarte:
So thou, that hunt’st for that thou longe hast mist,
Still makes thy boast, thou maist if that thou list.”

Plantin, the famed printer of Antwerp, had, in 1583, put forth an edition of Faerni’s fables,[144] and thus undoubtedly it was that Whitney became acquainted with them; and from the intercourse then existing between Antwerp and London it would be strange if a copy had not fallen into Shakespeare’s hands.

Owing to some malady, the King of France, in _All’s Well that Ends Well_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 59, vol. iii. p. 133), is unable to go forth to the Florentine war with those whom he charges to be “the sons of worthy Frenchmen.” Lafeu, an old lord, has learned from Helena some method of cure, and brings the tidings to the king, and kneeling before him is bidden to rise,—

“_King._ I’ll fee thee to stand up.
_Laf._ Then here’s a man stands, that has brought his pardon.
I would you had kneel’d, my lord, to ask me mercy;
And that at my bidding you could so stand up.
_King._ I would I had; so I had broke thy pate,
And ask’d thee mercy for’t.
_Laf._ Good faith, across: but, my good lord, ’tis thus;
Will you be cured of your infirmity?
_King._ No.
_Laf._ O, will you eat no grapes, my royal fox?
Yes, but you will my noble grapes, an if
My royal fox could reach them: I have seen a medicine
That’s able to breathe life into a stone,
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary
With spritely fire and motion.”

The fox, indeed, has always been a popular animal, and is the subject of many fables which are glanced at by Shakespeare;—as in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ (act iv. sc. 4, l. 87, vol. i. p. 143), when Julia exclaims,—

“Alas, poor Proteus! thou hast entertained
A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs.”

Or in _2 Henry VI._ (act iii. sc. 1, l. 55, vol. v. p. 153), where Suffolk warns the king of “the bedlam brain-sick duchess” of Gloucester,—

“Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.”
“The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.”

And again, in _3 Henry VI._ (act iv. sc. 7, l. 24, vol. v. p. 312), the cunning creature is praised by Gloucester in an “_aside_,”—

“But when the fox hath once got in his nose,
He’ll soon find means to make the body follow.”

The bird in borrowed plumes, or the Jackdaw dressed out in Peacock’s feathers, was presented, in 1596, on a simple device, not necessary to be produced, with the motto, “QVOD SIS ESSE VELIS,”—_Be willing to be what thou art._

“_Mutatis de te narratur fabula verbis,
Qui ferre alterius parta labore ſtudes._”

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“By a change in the words of thyself the fable is told,
Who by labour of others dost seek to bear off the gold.”

It is in the _Third_ Century of the Symbols and Emblems of Joachim Camerarius (No. 81), and by him is referred to Æsop,[145] Horace, &c.; and the recently published _Microcosm_, the 1579 edition of which contains Gerard de Jode’s fine representation of the scene.

Shakespeare was familiar with the fable. In _2 Henry VI._ (act iii. sc. 1, l. 69, vol. v. p. 153), out of his simplicity the king affirms,—

“Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent
From meaning treason to our royal person
As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove.”

But Margaret, his strong-willed queen, remarks (l. 75),—

“Seems he a dove? his feathers are but borrow’d,
For he’s disposed as the hateful raven.
Is he a lamb? his skin is surely lent him,
For he’s inclined as is the ravenous wolf.”

In _Julius Cæsar_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 68, vol. vii. p. 322), Flavius, the tribune, gives the order,—

“Let no images
Be hung with Cæsar’s trophies;”

and immediately adds (l. 72),—

“These growing feathers pluck’d from Cæsar’s wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.”

But more forcibly is the spirit of the fable expressed, when of Timon of Athens (act ii. sc. 1, l. 28, vol. vii. p. 228) a Senator, who was one of his importunate creditors, declares,—

“I do fear,
When every feather sticks in his own wing,
Lord Timon will be left a naked gull,
Which flashes now a phœnix.”

The fable of the Oak and the Reed, or, the Oak and the Osier, has an early representation in the Emblems of Hadrian Junius, Antwerp, 1565, though by him it is applied to the ash. “Εἴξας νικᾶ,” or, _Victrix animi equitas_,—“By yielding conquer,” or, “Evenness of mind the victrix,”—are the sentiments to be pictured forth and commented on. The device we shall take from Whitney; but the comment of Junius runs thus (p. 49),—

“_Ad Victorem Giselinum._”

“Vis Boreæ obnixas violento turbine sternit
Ornos: Arundo infracta eandem despicit.
Fit victor patiens animus cedendo furori:
Insiste, Victor, hanc viam & re, & nomine.”

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“The stout ash trees, with violent whirl
The North-wind’s force is stretching low;
The reeds unbroken rise again
And still in full vigour grow.
Yielding to rage, the patient mind
Victor becomes with added fame;
That course, my Victor, thou pursue
Reality, as well as name.”

Whitney adopts the same motto (p. 220), “He conquers who endures;” but while retaining from Junius the ash-tree in the pictorial illustration, he introduces into his stanzas “the mightie oke,” instead of the “stout ash.” From Erasmus (_in Epist._) he introduces an excellent quotation, that “it is truly the mark of a great mind to pass over some injuries, nor to have either ears or tongue ready for certain revilings.”

_Vincit qui patitur._

“The mightie oke, that shrinkes not with a blaste.
But stiflie standes, when Boreas moste doth blowe,
With rage thereof, is broken downe at laste,
When bending reedes, that couche in tempestes lowe
With yeelding still, doe safe, and sounde appeare:
And looke alofte, when that the cloudes be cleare.

When Enuie, Hate, Contempte, and Slaunder, rage:
Which are the stormes, and tempestes, of this life;
With patience then, wee must the combat wage,
And not with force resist their deadlie strife:
But suffer still, and then wee shall in fine,
Our foes subdue, when they with shame shall pine.”

On several occasions Shakespeare introduces this fable, and once moralises on it quite in Whitney’s spirit, if not in his manner. It is in the song of Guiderius and Arviragus from the _Cymbeline_ (act iv. sc. 2, l. 259, vol. ix. p. 257),—

“_Gui._ Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
_Arv._ Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.”

Less direct is the reference in the phrase from _Troilus and Cressida_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 49, vol. vi. p. 143),—

“when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks.”

To the same purport are Cæsar’s words (_Julius Cæsar_, act i. sc. 3, l. 5, vol. vii. p. 334),—

“I have seen tempests, when the scolding wings
Have rived the knotty oaks.”

In _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (act iv. sc. 2, l. 100, vol. ii. p. 138), the Canzonet, which Nathaniel reads, recognises the fable itself,—

“If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?
Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow’d!
Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove;
Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bow’d.”

We have, too, in _Coriolanus_ (act v. sc. 2, l. 102, vol. vi. p. 403) the lines, “The worthy fellow is our general: He is the rock; the oak not to be wind shaken.”

This phrase is to be exampled from Otho Vænius (p. 116), where occur the English motto and stanza, “Strengthened by trauaile,”—

“Eu’n as the stately oke whome forcefull wyndes do moue,
Doth fasten more his root the more the tempest blowes,
Against disastres loue or firmness greater growes,
And makes each aduers change a witness to his loue.”

In several instances it is difficult to determine whether expressions which have the appearance of glancing at fables really do refer to them, or whether they are current sayings, passing to and fro without any defined ownership. Also it is difficult to make an exact classification of what belongs to the fabulous and what to the proverbial. Of both we might collect many more examples than those which we bring forward; but the limits of our subject remind us that we must, as a general rule, confine our researches and illustrations to the Emblem writers themselves. We take this opportunity of saying that we may have arranged our instances in an order which some may be disposed to question; but mythology, fable, and proverb often run one into the other, and the knots cannot easily be disentangled. Take a sword and cut them; but the sword though sharp is not convincing.

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