Henry

attributed to Whitney by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries; and, if known to other literary men of the age, very reasonably may be supposed not unknown to the dramatist. Peacham, in 1612, p. 172 of his Emblems, acknowledges that it was from Whitney that he derived his own tale,—

"De Morte, et Cupidine."

EATH meeting once, with CVPID in an Inne,

"DE

Where roome was scant, togeither both they lay.
Both weariè, (for they roving both had beene,)
Now on the morrow when they should away,

CVPID Death's quiver at his back had throwne,
And DEATH tooke CVPIDS, thinking it his owne.

By this o're-sight, it shortly came to passe,

That young men died, who readie were to wed:

And age did revell with his bonny-lasse,
Composing girlonds for his hoarie head:

Invert not Nature, oh ye Powers twaine,

Giue CVPID'S dartes, and DEATH take thine againe."

Whitney luxuriates in this epithet "golden;"-golden fleece, golden hour, golden pen, golden sentence, golden book, golden palm are found recorded in his pages. At p. 214 we have the lines,

"A Leaden sworde, within a goulden sheathe,

Is like a foole of natures finest moulde,
To whome, shee did her rarest giftes bequethe,
Or like a sheepe, within a fleece of goulde."

We may indeed regard Whitney as the prototype of Hood's world-famous "Miss Kilmansegg, with her golden leg,"

"And a pair of Golden Crutches."

(vol. i. p. 189.)

Shakespeare is scarcely more sparing in this respect than the Cheshire Emblematist; he mentions for us "golden tresses of the dead," "golden oars and a silver stream," "the glory, that in gold clasps locks in the golden story," "a golden casket," "a

golden bed," and "a golden mind." Merchant of Venice (act ii.

sc. 7, lines 20 and 58, vol. ii. p. 312),—

“A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.

.

But here an angel in a golden bed

Lies all within.”

And applied direct to Cupid's artillery in Midsummer Night's Dream (act i. sc. 1, 1. 168, vol. ii. p. 204), Hermia makes fine use of the epithet golden,—

"My good Lysander!

I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head.”

So in Twelfth Night (act i. sc. I, 1. 33, vol. iii. p. 224), Orsino,
Duke of Milan, speaks of Olivia,-

"O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame

To pay the debt of love but to a brother,
How will she love, when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else

That live in her; when liver, brain and heart

These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd
Her sweet perfections with one self king!”

And when Helen praised the complexion or comeliness of Troilus above that of Paris, Cressida avers (Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 2, l. 100, vol. vi. p. 134),—

“I had as lief Helen's golden tongue had commended Troilus for a copper

nose."

As Whitney's pictorial illustration represents them, Death and Cupid are flying in mid-air, and discharging their arrows from the clouds. Confining the description to Cupid, this is exactly the action in one of the scenes of the Midsummer Night's Dream (act ii. sc. 1, l. 155, vol. ii. p. 216). The passage was intended to flatter Queen Elizabeth; it is Oberon who speaks,—

"That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Theatrum vita humana,

THEATR VM VI

TÆ HVMAN Æ.

CAPVT I.

VITA HVMANA EST TANQUAM Theatrum omnium miferiarum.

Vita hominis tanquam circus, vel grande theatrum est:
Quod tragici ostentat cuncta referta metus.
Hoclafciva caro peccatum,morfque,Satanque
Trift hominem vexant, exagitantque modo.

Life as a Theatre, from Bossards Theatrum" 1596

Cupid all arm'd a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy free.

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell :

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,

And maidens call it love-in-idleness."

Scarcely by possibility could a dramatist, who was also an actor, avoid the imagery of poetic ideas with which his own profession made him familiar. I am not sure if Sheridan Knowles did not escape the temptation; but if Shakespeare had done so, it would have deprived the world of some of the most forcible passages in our language. The theatre for which he wrote, and the stage on which he acted, supplied materials for his imagination to work into lines of surpassing beauty.

Boissard's "THEATRVM VITÆ HUMANA" (edition Metz, 4to, 1596) presents its first Emblem with the title,-Human life is as a Theatre of all Miseries. (See Plate XIV.)

"The life of man a circus is, or theatre so grand :

Which every thing shows forth filled full of tragic fear;
Here wanton sense, and sin, and death, and Satan's hand
Molest mankind and persecute with penalties severe."

The picture of human life which Boissard draws in his "Address to the Reader" is gloomy and dispiriting; there are in it, he declares, the various miseries and calamities to which man is subject while he lives,-and the conflicts to which he is exposed from the sharpest and cruellest enemies, the devil, the flesh, and the world; and from their violence and oppression there is no possibility of escape, except by the favour and help of God's mercy. Very similar ideas prevail in some of Shakespeare's lines; as